David Cameron is on an apology tour of his own. Well, a "regret" tour.

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(Reuters) - David Cameron on Wednesday became the first serving British prime minister to voice regret about one of the bloodiest episodes in colonial India, a massacre of unarmed civilians in the city of Amritsar in 1919.

The killings, known in India as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, were described by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian independence movement, as having shaken the foundations of the British Empire. A group of soldiers opened fire on an unarmed crowd without warning in the northern Indian city after a period of unrest, killing hundreds in cold blood.

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Dressed in a dark suit, Cameron laid a wreath at a memorial to the massacre, a terracotta-colored stone obelisk. He then stood in front of the monument in silence for a few moments.

"This is a deeply shameful event in British history, one that Winston Churchill rightly described at the time as 'monstrous'," Cameron wrote in a visitor book, referring to the former British leader.

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The British report into the Amritsar massacre at the time said 379 people had been killed and 1,200 wounded. But a separate inquiry commissioned by the Indian pro-independence movement said around 1,000 people had been killed in the city in Punjab.

Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, the man who gave the order to fire, explained his decision by saying he felt it was necessary to "teach a moral lesson to the Punjab".

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Many historians consider the massacre a turning point that undermined British rule of India.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/us-britain-india-amritsar-idUSBRE91J0AA20130220