Journalist shot dead during rioting in Northern Ireland

A journalist has been shot dead during violence in Londonderry, that police are treating as a "terrorist incident".

Dissident republicans are being blamed for killing 29-year-old Lyra McKee during rioting after police searches in Derry's Creggan area on Thursday night.

Petrol bombs were also thrown at police Land Rovers.

Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said the New IRA "are likely to be the ones behind this" and detectives have started a murder inquiry.

“Unfortunately at 11 o’clock last night a gunman appeared and fired a number of shots towards the police and a young woman, Lyra McKee, 29 years old, was wounded” and later died, he said.

Hamilton said police were treating the incident as a terrorist attack and had opened a murder inquiry.

McKee was writing a book on the disappearance of young people during three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, which ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement peace deal. She was described by publisher Faber as a rising star of investigative journalism.

Police said they did not believe she was working at the time of the attack.

A local journalist at the scene, Leona O’Neill, wrote on Twitter that after the woman was hit and fell besides a police Land Rover, officers rushed her to hospital, where she died.

Videos posted on social media showed police vehicles being pelted with what she said were dozens of petrol bombs, bricks, bottles, and fireworks.

The detonation of a large car bomb outside a courthouse in Londonderry in January highlighted the threat still posed by militant groups opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, who have previously launched attacks during the Easter period.

Politicians in Northern Ireland have also warned that Britain’s plans to leave the European Union could undermine the peace deal and that any border infrastructure would become targets for militant groups.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a congressional delegation to the city earlier on Thursday, as part of a trip, to show support for the peace agreement politicians in Washington helped to broker.

The leaders of Northern Ireland’s two largest political parties, the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party and pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), both condemned the killing.