ShareWELLINGTON (Reuters) - At least one gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques in the country’s worst ever mass shooting, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern condemned as terrorism.
A gunman broadcast live footage on Facebook of the attack on one
mosque in the city of Christchurch, mirroring the carnage played out in
video games, after publishing a “manifesto” in which he denounced
immigrants, calling them “invaders”.
New Zealand was placed on
its highest security threat level, Ardern said, adding that four people
taken into custody held extremist views but had not been on any police
watchlists.
“It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack,” Ardern said, call this “one of New Zealand’s darkest days”.
Police said later three people were in custody and one man in his
late 20s had been charged with murder. He will appear in court on
Saturday.
The visiting Bangladesh cricket team was arriving for
prayers at one of the mosques when the shooting started but all members
were safe, a team coach told Reuters.
Police Commissioner Mike Bush said 49 people had been killed in total.
The
video footage widely circulated on social media, apparently taken by a
gunman and posted online live as the attack unfolded, showed him driving
to one mosque, entering it and shooting randomly at people inside.
Worshippers,
possibly dead or wounded, lay huddled on the floor, the video showed.
Reuters was unable to confirm the authenticity of the footage.
One
man who said he was at the Al Noor mosque told media the gunman was
white, blond and wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest. The man burst
into the mosque as worshippers were kneeling for prayers.
“He had
a big gun ... he came and started shooting everyone in the mosque,
everywhere,” said the man, Ahmad Al-Mahmoud. He said he and others
escaped by breaking through a glass door.
Forty-one people were
killed at the Al Noor mosque, seven at a mosque in the Linwood
neighborhood and one died in hospital, police said. Hospitals said
children were among the victims.
Shortly before the attack began, an anonymous post on the discussion site 8chan, known for a wide range of content including hate speech, said the writer was going to “carry out an attack against the invaders” and included links to a Facebook live stream, in which the shooting appeared, and a manifesto.
The manifesto cited “white genocide”, a term typically used by racist
groups to refer to immigration and the growth of minority populations,
as his motivation.
The Facebook link directed users to the page of a user called brenton.tarrant.9.
A Twitter account with the handle @brentontarrant posted on Wednesday images of a rifle and other military gear decorated with names and messages connected to white nationalism. What looked like the same weapons appeared in the livestream of the mosque attack on Friday.
DARKEST DAY
It was not immediately clear if the attacks at the two mosques were carried out by the same man.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said one of the men in custody was Australian.
All
mosques in New Zealand had been asked to shut their doors and armed
guards posted at them, police said, adding they were not actively
looking for any other “identified suspects”.
Political and Islamic leaders across Asia and the Middle East condemned the killings.
“I
blame these increasing terror attacks on the current Islamophobia
post-9/11,” Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, posted on social
media. “1.3 billion Muslims have collectively been blamed for any act of
terror.”
Al-Azhar University, Egypt’s 1000-year-old seat of Sunni Islamic learning, said the attacks had “violated the sanctity of the houses of God”.
“We warn the attack is a dangerous indicator of the dire consequences
of escalating hate speech, xenophobia, and the spread of Islamophobia.”
Six Indonesians had been inside one of the mosques, with three
managing to escape and three unaccounted for, its foreign minister said.
Afghanistan’s ambassador said on Twitter three Afghans had been
wounded. Two Malaysians were wounded, their foreign ministry said.
Muslims account for just over 1 percent of New Zealand’s population, a 2013 census showed.
‘FIRING WENT ON AND ON’
The online footage, which appeared
to have been captured on a camera strapped to a gunman’s head, showed
him driving as music played in his vehicle. After parking, he took two
guns and walked a short distance to the mosque where he opened fire.
Over
the course of five minutes, he repeatedly shot worshippers, leaving
more than a dozen bodies in one room alone. He returned to the car
during that period to change guns, and went back to the mosque to shoot
anyone showing signs of life.
One man, with blood still on his
shirt, said in a television interview that he hid from a gunman under a
bench and prayed that he would run out of bullets.
“I was just praying to God and hoping our God, please, let this guy stop” Mahmood Nazeer told TVNZ.
“The
firing went on and on. One person with us had a bullet in her arm. When
the firing stopped, I looked over the fence, there was one guy,
changing his gun.”
The video shows the gunman then
driving off at high speed and firing from his car. Another video, taken
by someone else, showed police apprehending a gunman on a pavement by a
road.
Police said improvised explosive devices were found. The
gunman’s video had shown red petrol canisters in the back of his car,
along with weapons.
The Bangladesh cricket team is in Christchurch to play New Zealand in a third cricket test starting on Saturday.
“They
were on the bus, which was just pulling up to the mosque when the
shooting begun,” Mario Villavarayen, a team coach, told Reuters in a
message. “They are shaken but good.”
The third cricket test was canceled, New Zealand Cricket said later.
Violent crime is rare in New Zealand and police do not usually carry guns.
Before
Friday, New Zealand’s worst mass shooting was in 1990 when a gun-mad
loner killed 13 men, women and children in a 24-hour rampage in the tiny
seaside village of Aramoana. He was killed by police.
