A 28-year-old white male with ties to white supremacy is under arrest in connection with a massacre in New Zealand that has left at least 49 people dead and dozens injured. The New York Times:
Shots were fired at Al Noor Mosque on Deans Avenue in the center of the city and at Linwood Mosque, about three miles away, the police said.
The country’s police commissioner, Mike Bush, said in an evening news conference that 41 people had been killed at Al Noor Mosque and seven at Linwood Mosque, and that another victim had died at Christchurch Hospital.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said:
What has happened in Christchurch is an extraordinary act of unprecedented violence. It has no place in New Zealand. Many of those affected will be members of our migrant communities – New Zealand is their home – they are us.
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.
The shooter also left a manifesto. The Daily Beast describes parts of it:
“Other elements of the text appeared more earnest in their references to white-supremacist terror. The writer praised the perpetrators of other racist attacks, including Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who killed 77 people in 2011 in an attack inspired by his anger over immigration.”
‘The post was also filled with references to white supremacists. The 8chan poster connected to the attack posted a picture on Twitter of a bag with the “Sonnenrad” symbol, which is frequently used by neo-Nazis. In the manifesto, the author said the attack was motivated by the “14 Words,” a white-supremacist slogan.”
Two other people were detained in connection with the attack, but it’s not clear if they had a role in the attack.
