Victims of New Zealand mosque shootings 'from across the world'

New Zealand police have set up Restoring Family links page for the families of those affected of the mass shootings in New Zealand.

MENA

3 min read

The New Arab

15 March, 2019

A survivor of the shootings at Al Noor mosque, waits at a Christchurch Hospital [Getty]

At least 49 people have been confirmed dead and 48 treated for injuries after a mass shooter targeted Muslim worshippers during Friday prayers at two mosques in New Zealand, with many of the victims of the murders coming from across the world.

Police have set up Restoring Family links page for those affected, where missing people can register themselves as alive.

The recorded birth places for those missing range from Pakistan, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Indonesia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia - among others. At the time of writing, 24 people have been listed as missing.

Two Turkish citizens were injured in the attack but their lives are not in danger, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu at the European Parliament.

One witness told NBC News that the shooting started in the mosque's main room, shortly after the imam started his sermon. From the side room, he could not see the perpetrator.

The 28-year-old Australian attacker live streamed the attack from a camera strapped to his head. Police have called on people not to share the graphic video.

Footage from the scene showed the mosque prayer rooms covered in blood.

Survivors told their stories with many bare footed, having fled the mosque after taking their shoes off to pray.

A women who assisted a man by compressing his shot wounds told his wife on the phone "Don't come here to Dean's Avenue but please go to the hospital and wait for him". She saw a man die on the street.

"I'm 66 and I never thought in my life I would live to see something like this. Not in New Zealand."

Six Indonesians were inside the mosque during the attack. Three managed to escape and three remain unaccounted for, said Indonesia's Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

Malaysia has announced that two of their citizens are injured and being treated at the hospital. Children are also thought to be among the victims.

The shootings have shocked New Zealand, which is considered to be one of the safest countries in the world with very low murder rates.

"The person who has committed this violent act has no place here", said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in response to what she called a "terrorist attack" on one of her country's "darkest days".

Police have charged an Australian man with murder for the attack and have detained three others. The man posted an anti-immigration manifesto before the attack and described himself as a racist.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush said authorities had defused a number of improvised explosive devices that were attached to vehicles stopped after the attacks.

CJ Werleman, an Australian activist and journalist who writes for The New Arab, described the growing threat of anti-Muslim extremism in Australia and elsewhere.

"The western world must now come to the realisation that the gunman at the centre of this tragedy wasn't radicalised into violent extremism by the dark web or remote comers of the internet, but rather by anti-Muslim animus that's so freely amplified in the mainstream media, serving as a deadly reminder that Islamophobia remains the only socially acceptable form of racism," he told The New Arab.

US President Donald Trump has been criticised for sharing a link to far-right, Islamophobic website Breitbart on Twitter around the time of the shootings.

The suspect arrested in connection with the shootings reportedly praised Trump in his manifesto shared online.