Gunman kills 49 in New Zealand mosque shootings
A white man in his 20s was taken into custody after killing 49 and wounding dozens more at two Christchurch mosques, reports the BBC. Authorities described him as an "extremist right-wing terrorist"; he live-streamed one of the attacks on the internet.
The attack, which came around the time people were attending the mosques for Friday prayers, was the deadliest in the nation's history.
A gunman live-streamed footage of his rampage to Facebook, filmed with a head-mounted camera. The footage showed him firing indiscriminately at men, women and children from close range inside the Al-Noor mosque.
Police called on the public not to share the "extremely distressing" footage online. Facebook said it had removed the gunman's Facebook and Instagram accounts and was working to remove any copies of the footage.
He's been named by some media as Brent or Brenton Tarrant. A 74-page anti-immigration manifesto posted online and attributed to the killer rants about "white genocide".
The 74-page document, called The Great Replacement, consists of a rant about white genocide and lists various aims, including the creation of "an atmosphere of fear" against Muslims.
The document, which suggests an obsession with violent uprisings against Islam, claims that the suspect had "brief contact" with the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik and that Breivik gave a "blessing" for the attack. ... In a question-and-answer section of the manifesto, the author claims he was not seeking fame and was actually a "private and mostly introverted person".
He describes himself as an ethnonationalist and a fascist.
The document (a tangle of rage and "ironic" Nazi "humor" in the internet-trolling mode) praised Trump, Anders Breivik, right-wing grifter Candace Owens among others as inspiration. On the livestream, he recommended following YouTuber PewDiePie.
The New Zealand massacre was livestreamed on Facebook, announced on 8chan, reposted on YouTube, commentated about on Reddit, and mirrored around the world before the tech companies could even react.
- Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) March 15, 2019
A video that was apparently livestreamed by the shooter shows the attack in horrifying detail. The gunman spends more than two minutes inside the mosque spraying terrified worshippers with bullets again and again, sometimes re-firing at people he has already cut down.
He then walks outside to the street, where he shoots at people on the sidewalk. Children's screams can be heard in the distance as he returns to his car to get another rifle.
The gunman then walks back into the mosque, where there are at least two dozen people lying on the ground. After walking back outside and shooting a woman there, he gets back in his car, where the song "Fire" by English rock band "The Crazy World of Arthur Brown" can be heard blasting from the speakers. The singer bellows, "I am the god of hellfire!" and the gunman drives away. The video then cuts out.
New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern quickly asserted the attack was an act of terrorism. One Australian Senator, Fraser Anning, publicly blamed Muslims for the attack.
Daily Mirror and Daily Mail running edited parts of the Christchurch terrorist's first-person video on their websites, pop-ups, ads around them.
Daily Mail's shows him walking to mosque door and aiming to begin attack.
The Mirror's shows him shooting at people. pic.twitter.com/aLJLQI8fB4
- Mark Di Stefano
(@MarkDiStef) March 15, 2019
Correction: Anning is a politician in Australia, not New Zealand.