By Amanda Ferguson
BELFAST (Reuters) -Northern Irish police suspect that the New IRA Irish nationalist militant group may have been responsible for the attempted murder of a senior detective who was shot in front of his son on Wednesday evening in the town of Omagh.
Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell was shot a number of times by two gunmen while putting footballs in his car after a youth training session, Assistant Chief Constable Mark McEwan said. He remains in a critical condition in hospital.
The gunmen continued to fire while the detective was on the ground, McEwan said. Both gunmen fired multiple shots and at least two other vehicles were struck in a crowded car park where parents and children ran to get to safety, he added.
The suspects’ car was found burnt out just outside Omagh, the scene of the worst attack of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” when nationalist militants killed 29 people by detonating a car bomb on a busy shopping street four months after a 1998 peace deal.
“We are keeping an open mind, there are multiple strands to that investigation. The primary focus is on violent dissident republicans and within that there is a primary focus as well on New IRA,” McEwan told BBC Northern Ireland.
While the peace agreement largely ended three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, police officers are still sporadically targeted by splinter groups of mostly Irish nationalist militants opposed to Britain’s rule over the region.
The New IRA, a small militant nationalist group opposed to the peace deal, has targeted police previously and was responsible for the killing of journalist Lyra McKee in 2019.
The last time a police officer was shot in Northern Ireland was 2017 and the United Kingdom last year lowered its Northern Ireland-related terrorism threat level for the first time in more than a decade.
The threat from domestic groups was lowered to “substantial” from “severe”, according to an independent assessment by the MI5 domestic spy service. Police said at the time that operations against nationalist militants were making attacks less likely.
Caldwell, who a friend told the BBC is in his late 40s, has been a senior detective for a number of years and has investigated a lot of serious crimes and terrorist activity, Police Federation for Northern Ireland Chair Liam Kelly said.
Caldwell was not subject to any more of a threat than any other officer, Kelly said, citing discussions he had following the attack.
“Unfortunately this is a stark reminder for our colleagues that 25 years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, policing in Northern Ireland is still a very dangerous occupation and carries extreme risk,” Kelly said.
“Clearly these people have done some research on what John was doing and have taken advantage of the fact that he is out there volunteering with young people and have used that forum to try and basically murder him. It is absolutely barbaric.”
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson, writing by Padraic Halpin; editing by William James and Nick Macfie)
