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Police in Northern Ireland have announced that they have arrested two people after the death of journalist Lyra McKee during Thursday night's violence in the border town of Londonderry. The violent death of the 29-year-old journalist has revived old demons, twenty-one years after the signing of the Good Friday peace agreement, and worried about the future in Northern Ireland.
The two men, aged 18 and 19, were taken to a Belfast police station where they are interrogated, reports our London correspondent, Marina Daras. They are detained under anti-terrorism legislation and suspected of using firearms.
Major Investigation Team detectives arrested two men, aged 18 and 19 under the Terrorism Act, in connection with the murder of Lyra McKee in the Creggan area of Derry on Thursday, 18th April.
They have been taken to Musgrave Serious Crime Suite.
CCTV footage shows one of them firing point-blank at an armored police car. The authorities have called for witnesses to try to identify other attackers visible on these images.
According to North Hamilton Deputy Chief Commissioner Mark Hamilton, Lyra McKee was killed by a man who opened fire on police officers in the Creggan neighborhood, where about 50 molotov cocktails were thrown at him. police and cars were burned. Seriously injured, the young woman died at the hospital.
The commissioner describes them as "violent Republican dissidents" making "most likely part of the New IRA," a paramilitary group from the Irish Republican Army.
The New IRA: genesis of a movement
The New IRA was born in 2012 from the merger of two groups - the Real IRA and the Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD).
The Real IRA movement was formed in 1997 by dissidents of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who refused the ceasefire. RAAD, for its part, was a group of vigilante-like Republicans based mainly in Londonderry (Derry for the Irish) who targeted people suspected of drug trafficking.
The training would include some 200 activists from the Irish unit, according to the Irish authorities. It is the cause of a number of armed attacks, including on British soil, in recent years.