A dissident group known as the
Police in Northern Ireland are still investigating the death of 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot Thursday during a police riot in Derry, also known as Londonderry.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland arrested a 57-year-old woman on Tuesday in connection to the McKee’s killing, but police later said she was released “unconditionally.”
This came the same day a dissident group known as the New Irish Republican Army (IRA) took responsibility for the shooting, though it apologized for her death in a statement, indicating that McKee was not the intended target.
“In the course of attacking the enemy Lyra McKee was tragically killed while standing beside enemy forces,” the statement, which was given to the Irish News, said. “The IRA offer our full and sincere apologies to the partner, family and friends of Lyra McKee for her death.”
The statement from the new IRA accused “heavily armed British crown forces” for “provoking the rioting” in Creggan estate, a largely Catholic housing complex in Derry.
McKee, a journalist who has documented Northern Ireland’s ongoing peace process, was killed in the riots that erupted after police raided Creggan in search of explosives and weapons they believed were about to used by New IRA dissidents in attacks. Rioters threw Molotov cocktails at police, and two cars were hijacked and set on fire.
McKee had been reporting on the confrontation when she struck in the head by a bullet when someone fired at police officers. McKee died of her injuries at the hospital.
Two teenagers were taken into custody shortly after McKee’s death, but both were later released. Now, the 57-year-old woman has also been released.
The New IRA is a nationalist paramilitary group that formed around 2012. Though it often refers to itself as “the IRA,” the majority of Provisional IRA members disarmed as part of the Good Friday Agreement — the landmark peace deal, signed in 1998, that ended decades of conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.
