London: Martin McGuinness, a one-time Irish Republican Army commander who later helped negotiate an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland, has died aged 66.
His Sinn Fein party, which opposes British rule in Northern Ireland and was long considered the political arm of the IRA, announced the death in a statement.
The BBC said McGuinness, who played a central behind-the-scenes role in an historic 1998 peace deal, had died of a rare heart condition.
“While I can never condone the path he took in the earlier part of his life, McGuinness ultimately played a defining role in leading the Republican movement away from violence,” Prime Minister Theresa May said.
Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim died in an IRA bomb in the English town of Warrington in 1993, told BBC radio he could not forgive McGuinness but paid tribute to his “desire for peace”.
But UK lawmaker Norman Tebbit, whose wife Margaret was paralysed in the IRA’s 1984 bombing, said the world was “a sweeter and cleaner place now” without McGuinness.
