ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

The Government was urged to formally apologise today for a historic massacre by British soldiers in India that left hundreds of people dead.

On a visit to the site at Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar, Sadiq Khan called on ministers to make a “full and formal” apology for the 1919 atrocity.

Although David Cameron visited the Northern Indian town, home to the famous Sikh Golden Temple as Prime Minister in 2013, he stopped short of saying sorry.

At least 379 Sikhs were killed and many more injured when 50 British army soldiers began shooting into an unarmed gathering of civilians who were protesting oppressive laws enforced in the Punjab by British colonial authorities.

Winston Churchill, who was War Secretary at the time, led condemnation of the commanding officer Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer.

At the memorial garden, Mr Khan said: “The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is one of the most horrific events in Indian history. It is wrong that successive British governments have fallen short of delivering a formal apology to the families of those who were killed.

“I’m clear that the Government should now apologise. This is about properly acknowledging what happened here and giving the people of Amritsar and India the closure they need.”

Mr Cameron visited Amritsar at the end of a trade mission to India four years ago in a public show of British contrition over the massacre.

He expressed profound regret in a book of remembrance, describing the massacre as “a deeply shameful event” but stopped short of a formal apology.