Two men, aged 27 and 40, held in connection with death of officer killed in booby-trap bomb attack in 2011

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Two men have been arrested in Northern Ireland in connection with the dissident republican murder of a Catholic police recruit six years ago.

A 27-year-old was arrested in Omagh, the County Tyrone town where PC Ronan Kerr was killed in a booby-trap bomb attack in 2011.

Another man, aged 40, was handed over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland from prison.

Kerr, 25, died in the explosion outside his apartment in Omagh on 2 April 2011. He was the second PSNI officer to die at the hands of republican dissident paramilitaries opposed to the peace process.

An independent hardline republican armed unit from east Tyrone was behind the attack on Kerr’s car. The unit had once belonged to the Provisional IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade but left in protest over Sinn Féin’s peace strategy.

The east Tyrone republicans behind Kerr’s murder later joined an alliance of anti-ceasefire groups that became known as the New IRA.



The first PSNI officer to die at the hands of hardline republicans was PC Stephen Carroll who was shot dead in a Continuity IRA gun attack in Craigavon in 2009.