There are growing calls for the British government to apologise to the families of 10 people killed in Ballymurphy during a British army operation in 1971 after an inquest found the use of force was unjustified and that the dead were innocent. Naomi Long, the Alliance party leader and Northern Ireland’s justice minister, led calls for Boris Johnson to make an unreserved, formal apology for the killings by soldiers in the Catholic west Belfast neighbourhood during the Troubles. It also emerged on Wednesday that some of the families of those killed are to pursue a civil action against the Ministry of Defence and want the police to launch a criminal investigation. The Northern Ireland coroner, Mrs Justice Keegan, vindicated the families’ decades-long campaign on Tuesday with a detailed report that said all the dead were “entirely innocent of wrongdoing” and not linked to paramilitary groups. She said soldiers killed nine people but could not determine who killed the 10th, John McKerr. It was a blistering indictment of the army’s actions during street disturbances in Ballymurphy in early August 1971 and the subsequent state-backed efforts to depict most of the dead as IRA members. In a statement Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, acknowledged the “terrible hurt” caused to the families and said they should not have had to wait 50 years for details about what happened. He said the government would “carefully consider” the report. There was no apology. Parties across the political spectrum in Northern Ireland expressed sympathy to the families. The Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) and the Alliance party urged the government to make a formal apology on par with that made by David Cameron over Bloody Sunday after a 2010 inquest found the 13 people killed by the army in Derry in 1972 were innocent. “We saw how much a similar apology in relation to Bloody Sunday meant to the families there, and I encourage the government to acknowledge the courage of the Ballymurphy families with a similar statement,” said Long. Colum Eastwood, the SDLP leader, said what happened in Ballymurphy was inhuman. “It should shame the British establishment that they forced innocent people to fight for so long and made that journey so difficult.” Sinn Féin said the killings were murder. Some of the families are to pursue legal action. “One of those avenues is civil proceedings against the Ministry of Defence and in parallel with the inquest the families initiated those proceedings,” Paddy Murray, a solicitor who represents nine of the 10 families, told BBC Radio Foyle. “They were stalled pending the outcome of these findings. Given the very critical commentary by the coroner we will be moving forward with some vigour in relation to the civil action.” Eileen McKeown, whose father, Joseph Corr, was one of those killed in Ballymurphy, called for a criminal investigation. “I think it’s now in the hands of the police and I think they now need to do what they should have done 50 years ago,” she told the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster. “I think the police need to do their job that they’re paid to do and investigate the murders.”