“A violent extremist has launched a terrorist attack against innocent New Zealanders,” Ardern told a news conference. “The individual is behind it, not faith,” the prime minister said. “He alone is responsible for such actions,” she added.
Police said there was no further danger, the attacker was alone. Police officers watching him thought he was going to the supermarket to shop, but he pulled out a large knife in the store and began stabbing people around him. “We did everything we could to keep track of him, and the fact that we were able to intervene so quickly, in about sixty seconds, demonstrates how closely we followed him,” said Andrew Coster of the New Zealand Police Department. The prime minister said that to this day, the man had not committed any crime that would lead to his arrest and imprisonment.
Coster added that he understands that the situation raises the question of whether the police could have done more or intervened more quickly. But he assured that the surveillance teams were “as close as they could be without compromising surveillance.” “The reality is that when you watch someone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it’s not always possible to be right next to them. The employees intervened as quickly as they could to prevent further injuries, “he was quoted as saying Radio New Zealand (RNZ).
Reuters previously reported that rescuers took one critically injured and three serious people to the hospital. The attacker died on the spot, according to the prime minister, he was shot within a minute of the start of the attack.
Witnesses said they saw several people with stab wounds lying on the floor of a store in a shopping mall in the suburbs of New Lynn. Others said they heard gunshots as they fled the store.
New Zealand experienced the worst attack to date in March, when a terrorist convinced of the superiority of the white race shot a total of 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch. In May this year, another attacker stabbed four people in a supermarket in Dunedin.
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