Journalist shot dead in Northern Ireland by 'New IRA'

Derry, United Kingdom: A journalist was shot dead during riots in Northern Ireland in what police Friday were treating as a terrorist incident following the latest upsurge in violence to shake the troubled region.

Northern Ireland police suspect a “violent dissident republican” of fatally shooting journalist Lyra McKee in Londonderry, with fingers being pointed at a group calling itself the “New IRA”.

“Lyra McKee was murdered during orchestrated violence in Creggan last night,” assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton said in a statement. McKee, 29, had earlier posted an image that appeared to be from the riots in the Creggan housing estate in the city of Londonderry, also known as Derry, accompanied by the words “Derry tonight. Absolute madness.”

Images of the unrest posted on social media showed a car and van ablaze and hooded individuals throwing petrol bombs and fireworks at police vehicles. “A single gunman fired shots in a residential area of the city and as a result wounded Ms McKee,” said Mr Hamilton, adding that police believed the gunman was a “violent dissident republican”. “We are treating this as a terrorist incident and we have launched a murder inquiry,” he added. McKee was named by Forbes Magazine in 2016 as one of their “30 under 30” outstanding figures in media, according to her literary agent Janklow & Nesbit.

Friday’s unrest raised memories of past decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar warned that “we cannot allow those who want to propagate violence, fear and hate to drag us back to the past”.

The violence came in the run-up to the Easter weekend, when Republicans opposed to the British presence in Northern Ireland mark the anniversary of a 1916 uprising against British rule.

A car-bombing and the hijacking of two vans in Londonderry earlier this year were also blamed on a dissident paramilitary group.

The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 largely brought an end to three decades of sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland between republican and unionist paramilitaries, as well as British armed forces, in a period known as “the Troubles”.

Some 3,500 people were killed in the conflict — many at the hands of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The New IRA came into being in 2012 following the merger between

two groups — the Real IRA and Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD).

The Real IRA was formed in 1997 by dissident members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) unhappy about the group’s ceasefire that year, preferring to “realise their vision through violence rather than democracy and politics”, according to Gemma Clark, history lecturer at the University of Exeter.

RAAD was a republican vigilante group, focused mainly in Londonderry, that targeted suspected drug dealers with “punishment shootings” and pipe bomb attacks. — Agencies