Worshippers have visited a New Zealand mosque as it reopened for the first time after dozens of people died there in a mass shooting.
By Associated Press Reporters
March 23 2019 6:05 AM
Worshippers have visited a New Zealand mosque as it reopened for the first time after dozens of people died there in a mass shooting.
Hundreds of people stopped at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch to lay flowers or pray after police removed a cordon and those running the mosque decided to reopen.
Inside the mosque, there were few signs of the carnage from eight days earlier.
Crews had replaced windows that worshippers smashed in a desperate attempt to escape when the attack during Friday prayers. Bullet holes were plastered over and painted.
Shagat Khan, the president of the Muslim Association of Canterbury, said they had not planned to open the mosque so soon but when they saw the crowds gathering after the police cordon was removed, they decided to allow people to enter in managed groups “so the mosque will be alive again”.
“Those who lost their families are of course quite emotional,” he said. “And those who were present here during the incident, of course the memories come back. The flashbacks.”
A total of 50 people were killed at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, in the nation’s worst terrorist attack.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with murder and is scheduled to make his next court appearance on April 5.
Abdullahi Ibrahim Diriye, the uncle of the youngest victim of the shooting, three-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim, visited the mosque with the boy’s father.
