[peterwwillis]

You don't know?

The estimates for the civilians killed in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 range from hundreds to thousands - no exact count is available.

In terms of "which side drew first blood", you could say the "side" of the student protesters, though there's no evidence of "blood" in their actions (as they had no weapons).

The morning of June 3, protesters clashed with unarmed soldiers trying to force them out of the square, momentarily forcing the army to retreat. By 10pm that night, the army began firing live ammunition at the protesters and the fatalities commenced.

[Tomte]

est probably means that while we "know" that people were killed on Tiananmen Square, they were actually killed in the streets around the square, not on the square itself.

(Other sources say that there were indeed deaths on the square, but less than five or so, not the main massacre)

But it doesn't really matter where exactly the deaths happened.

Only insofar as it reminds us of the fallibility of the human mind (cf. witnesses in court): many people actually believe they have seen in TV how people were slaughtered on the square, which is demonstrably incorrect.