Forty-nine people have been killed and at least 20 seriously injured in what New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says “can now only be described as a terrorist attack.”
In the hours following the shooting, the media had reported the incident with the terms ‘armed shooter’ and ‘gunman’ – to describe the person carrying out the attack. The Prime Minister’s address changed that – and changed the way people were looking for the New Zealand attack.
But even after New Zealand’s Prime Minister herself called it a terrorist attack, Indian media is still using the term ‘shooter’ and ‘gunman’ to describe the person carrying out the terror attack.
The man, who has been identified as 28-year-old Australian-born Brenton Tarrant, filmed and shared the attack on social media. Dressed in a military-style, camouflage outfit, and carrying an automatic rifle, he started randomly shooting people in the Al Noor mosque shortly after 1.40pm local time (12.40am GMT).
Gunmen then opened fire at a second mosque in the suburb of Linwood, where police said there have also been multiple casualties.
Tarrant, who filmed himself attacking a Christchurch mosque in a Facebook Live video, posted a 74-page manifesto in which he claims to be from a “working class, low-income family”.