Killed journalist in Northern Ireland: Who is behind the "New IRA"?

Friends and supporters of journalist Lyra MyKee protested on Easter Monday in front of a building in Derry, Northern Ireland. They lamented the death of the 29-year-old, who had been killed on Good Friday by a headshot.

Some of them paint their hands in red paint to smear the walls of an office building. It is the seat of Saoradh, a party formed in 2016 of several IRA factions. The party, the demonstrators say, has blood on its hands. Finally, she is close to the "New IRA," the paramilitary group that professed to kill McKee.

Emotions running high in Derry as friends of #LyraMcKee protesting with red paint at HQ of Saoradh, linked with New IRA pic.twitter.com/jaZuKzGnQk

In the statement to the "Irish News", the "New IRA" asks the relatives "sincerely apologize". The letter had been verified, the newspaper said. The reporter was said to have been "tragically killed" when she was on the side of "hostile forces," the statement said. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish police arrested a 57-year-old woman.

The "New IRA": Who is behind the group?

The authorities had early on the "New IRA" as suspects for the offense in sight. It is one of the largest republican splinter groups in Northern Ireland, rejects the peace-building Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and aims for a unified independent Ireland. With her four murders are associated: In Omagh in 2011, the police officer Ronan Kerr dies by a car bomb. In 2012, policeman David Black is shot dead on his way to work. A third, Adrian Ismay, is the victim of a bomb exploding in his van in Belfast in 2016.

On Jan. 19 this year, a car bomb exploded outside the Derry court - in the same city where McKee was shot. Shortly before the detonation, a group of young people had passed the attack site. Nobody was hurt in the end. The "New IRA" confessed to the attack.

In March, the group was again conspicuous. She confessed to parcel and letter bombs found in London and Glasgow. None of the bombs detonated.

It is believed that the "New IRA" formed between 2011 and 2012 when several groups joined together, including the "Real IRA". This had been created in 1997 by former members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who were dissatisfied with the truce achieved at that time. Here is an overview of who or what is behind the IRA.

Among other things, the "New IRA" is active in the Derry area and in the north and west of Belfast and has about 200 members, according to the Irish authorities.

Burning cars, gunfire, riots: Is the violence of the Good Friday demos increasing?

The Easter weekend is traditionally used in Northern Ireland for political rallies. There are regular riots in connection with the Northern Ireland conflict. The riots of the weekend happened at a time when Irish Catholic nationalists recalled the rebellion against the British in 1916.

It's hard to see how the demos last Friday were more aggressively charged than in previous years. After all, the attacks and unrest in the period after the Good Friday Agreement had never subsided. They were just too small to be picked up by foreign media. The murder of McKee changes that now.

The conflict is now discharging almost exclusively in the city of Londonderry - or Derry, as she calls the predominantly Catholic population - in the northwestern part of the Northern Irish province on the border with the Republic of Ireland.

The incident occurred in Creggan, a housing estate in Derry. The police spoke of more than 50 incendiary devices that were hurled; several shots were fired. In pictures and videos could be seen burning cars, armored police vehicles and heavily armed security forces. A house search by the police - according to own data, in order to prevent violent attacks - had ignited the conflict.

Recently, security forces on both sides of the Irish border are recovering from several hundred active armed terrorists in Northern Ireland. And there is evidence that paramilitary groups are increasingly using firearms and explosives arsenals of old depots of Official IRAs (OIRA), which had fled in the 1970s.

21 years after the Good Friday Agreement: How stable is peace in Northern Ireland?

Tensions in the UK province have been fueled by uncertainty over Brexit over the past few months, most notably as to how the border between EU member Ireland and Northern Ireland will look in the future.

Gerry Moriarty, the Northern Ireland correspondent for the Irish Times, for example, recently said that the discussion about the "hard line" with Ireland has the potential to lead to significant new protests. "The paramilitary organizations," he said, "see Brexit as an opportunity - the harder the better."

The failure of Northern Ireland's most important parties - the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Irish Republican Sinn Féin party - to agree on a government is reversing the nationalists. The peace agreement of the Good Friday Agreement stipulated that the government must always be made up of representatives of both population groups. These are

• on the British side the ultra-conservative Protestant DUP . She does not want to know anything about a united Ireland, but stands for the unity of the Kingdom of Great Britain. This is supported by the fact that the DUP has entered into an alliance with Theresa May's ruling party in London.

• on the other side the Irish republican Sinn Féin . It was long considered the political offshoot of the violent terrorist organization Provisional IRA (PIRA).

At present, however, the seat of government in Stormont is empty. This is one point of the Good Friday Agreement is not met.