Northern Ireland police have arrested two teenagers in the killing of 29-year-old investigative journalist Lyra McKee, authorities said Saturday.
The suspects are both men, ages 18 and 19, and were arrested under the terrorism act, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) tweeted. They have been taken to a police station in central Belfast, police said.
McKee, who was a prominent journalist, was killed in the Creggan area of Londonderry on Thursday in what police in Northern Ireland have described as a “terrorist incident.”
The PSNI released CCTV footage of the shooting in the hope that members of the community would provide information on the shooting.
The footage apparently captured Mckee’s final moments around 10 p.m. local time (5p ET) on Thursday, when she stood among a crowd and raised her phone in the air to capture the rioting taking place in front of her.
McKee was standing close to a police vehicle when she was wounded by the shots fired by a single gunman. She died soon after from her injuries, assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton told reporters Friday.
The police suspect the shooting, which happened during a night of rioting, was carried out by IRA dissidents, namely the New IRA.
“I cannot stress enough how important it is that people who were in the area last night and who recorded video and took photos share what they have with us,” Northern Ireland Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy said in a statement on Friday.
“People saw the gunman and people saw those who goaded young people out onto the streets, people know who they are. The answers to what happened last night lie within the community. I am asking people to do the right thing for Lyra McKee, for her family and for the city… help us stop this madness,” he added.
‘Single barbaric act’
McKee, who was born in Belfast, is the first journalist to be killed in the United Kingdom since 2001, according to the nonprofit organization the Committee to Protect Journalists.
During a vigil on Friday, her partner, Sara Canning, said McKee’s “amazing potential was snuffed out by this single barbaric act,” according to the Press Association.
“Victims and LGBTQIA community are left without a tireless advocate and activist and it has left me without the love of my life, the woman I was planning to grow old with,” she added.
“This cannot stand. Lyra’s death must not be in vain because her life was a shining light in everyone else’s life and her legacy will live on and the life that she has left behind.”
Northern Irish politicians, including Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster and Irish Republican Sinn Fein party leader Mary Lou McDonald, condemned McKee’s killing during Friday’s gathering in the Creggan area of the city, which is also known as Derry.
Growing unrest
Thursday’s unrest came ahead of Easter weekend, during which republicans mark the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, considered one of the most important events in the struggle for Irish independence.
Trouble flared when police entered Creggan area to carry out searches on “dissident republicans” who they believed were storing firearms and explosives for a number of planned attacks over Easter weekend, the police said in a statement.
As the searches began, a crowd gathered and “upwards of 50 petrol bombs were thrown at officers,” the statement said. Two vehicles were hijacked and set on fire, it added.
A recent spate of violence in Northern Ireland has raised fears that sectarian violence might be revived amid ongoing concerns over the effects of Brexit.
In January, a car bomb was detonated in Derry in a suspected attack by the New IRA.
Many fear that Britain’s departure from the European Union will mean the reintroduction of border posts on the frontier between Northern Ireland, part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, a European Union member.
Border infrastructure was often targeted by Irish nationalist paramilitaries during the “Troubles” — the 40-year sectarian conflict in which more than 3,500 people died.