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Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Michelle O'Neill: "I'm sorry for every single life lost"

Photo: Damien Storan/dpa

Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Michelle O'Neill has apologized to the families of those killed in the Northern Irish Civil War ("Troubles").

"I'm sorry for every single life lost, and there are no exceptions," said the politician from the Catholic Republican party Sinn Féin on Friday in Belfast.

O'Neill added that neither supporters of Irish unity nor any of the other sides in the conflict could shirk responsibility for suffering, pain and political violence.

She now represents a new generation that has left the conflict behind, said O'Neill.

The head of government also called on the British government in London to apologize.

Decades of war

In the conflict, predominantly Catholic supporters of a unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland fought against mostly Protestant supporters of the union with Great Britain, the police and the British military.

Several thousand people died.

The civil war lasted from the late 1960s until the peace agreement in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Sinn Féin was long seen as the political arm of the militant organization IRA, which used armed force to fight for Northern Ireland's separation from the United Kingdom.

The IRA did not shy away from torture, murder and terrorist attacks.

It has now broken up.

However, various splinter groups repeatedly carry out attacks.

The background to O'Neill's apology was the presentation on Friday of the preliminary report of a police investigation into an informant for the British security authorities in the IRA.

The informant, codenamed “Stakeknife,” is linked to at least 14 murders.

According to the preliminary results of the seven-year investigation, murders and kidnappings by an IRA unit led by "Stakeknife" could have been prevented, but the informant was considered too valuable.

However, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak initially rejected calls for an apology.

The government would like to wait for the final version of the report, said the spokeswoman.

lph/dpa