POLICE IN NORTHERN Ireland say they have made a number of “significant” arrests in relation to dissident republican activity in the country.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) made a raid near Keady in south Armagh near the border with the Republic but said they could not release any more information at this stage, BBC reports.

The news came on the day that the Belfast Telegraph published a statement from former members of the Provisional IRA claiming responsibility for the murder of police constable Ronan Kerr in a car bomb earlier this month.

The ex-provos said they were behind “the recent execution of the RUC member in Omagh” and vowed to continue the IRA’s campaign of violence until the end of “British occupation” and the unification of Ireland adding:

Irish republicans have continued to organise against the British presence in our country.

We continue to do so under the name of the Irish Republican Army.

We are the IRA.

The statement has been widely condemned.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams called on the dissidents “to go away”, RTÉ reports, whilst the first minister of Norther Ireland Peter Robinson siad the statement summed up Kerr’s killers’ “moral and political emptiness”, BBC reports.

Police have charged a 33-year-old man from Omagh with terrorist offences in connection with the murder of 25-year-old Kerr three weeks ago.