An attempted murder inquiry has been launched after a police officer was shot and seriously injured in Northern Ireland, with police citing the trail of Republican dissidents on Thursday.
This attack, a month and a half after the 25th anniversary of the peace agreement that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland, happened while children were training football.
Local police said John Cadwell, a veteran off-duty officer, was hospitalized and was in “critical but stable” condition as of Thursday morning.
He was shot dead several times by two men at a sports complex in the central provincial town of Omagh on Wednesday night, according to Northern Ireland Police, who launched a witness appeal.
While the inquiry does not rule out leads, it focuses on those of “violent dissident Republicans” hostile to UK membership and in particular the new IRA, Deputy Commissioner Mark McEwan told the BBC Ulster on Thursday.
The attack has not yet been the subject of any lawsuits.
In April 2021, a bomb was planted under a police officer’s car outside her home, an act alleged by the New IRA, a dissident republican group affiliated with the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
The group had also admitted to being responsible for the death of Lyra McKee, a journalist who was killed in April 2019 while covering clashes in the city of Londonderry.
The new IRA had apologized to the young woman’s family and said she was with the police.
These events had raised the specter of the “Troubles”, that violence which for three decades had opposed Republicans (mostly Catholics in favor of Ireland’s reunification) and Protestant Unionists, ardent defenders of the north of the island’s belonging to the United Kingdom.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended this conflict, which claimed 3,500 lives and established a fragile peace, but paramilitary groups remained active.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was “appalled by the shameful shooting of an off-duty police officer”. “There is no place in our society for those who try to harm government officials who protect the population,” he added in a tweet.
Republican leader Sinn Féin (majority), Michelle O’Neill, condemned an attack as “scandalous and shameful”.
Meanwhile, the leader of the unionized DUP party, Jeffrey Donaldson, keen to keep the province in the fold of London, condemned the “cowards” behind the attack. “These terrorists have nothing to offer and must be brought to justice,” he added.
The attack comes at a sensitive political moment for the British province, where Brexit has reignited tensions in the community.
Local facilities that should be shared by communities have been blocked for more than a year. London is currently trying to agree with Brussels to change the province’s customs status and bring unionists back into local government.