BY AGENCY REPORTER
New Zealand police on Friday shot and killed a “violent extremist” known to the police and suspected to be an ISIS extremist.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced his killing after he had stabbed and wounded at least six people in a supermarket, South China Morning Post reports.
File photo used to illustrate the story
The attacker, a Sri Lankan national who had been in New Zealand for 10 years, was inspired by the militant group Islamic State and was being “monitored constantly”, Ardern said.
“A violent extremist undertook a terrorist attack on innocent New Zealanders,” Ardern told a briefing. “He obviously was a supporter of ISIS ideology,” she said, referring to Islamic State.
The attacker, who was not identified, had been a “person of interest” for about five years, Ardern said, adding that he had been killed within 60 seconds of beginning his attack in the city of Auckland.
Police following the man thought he had gone into the New Lynn supermarket to do some shopping but he pulled out a large knife and started “running around like a lunatic” stabbing people, shopper Michelle Miller told the Stuff online news outlet.
Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster told the briefing the man was acting alone and police were confident there was no further threat to the public.
“We were doing absolutely everything possible to monitor him and indeed the fact that we were able to intervene so quickly, in roughly 60 seconds, shows just how close we were watching him,” Coster said.
New Zealand has been on alert for attacks since a white supremacist gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch on March 15, 2019.
The Prime Minister, asked if the Friday attack could have been revenge for the 2019 mosque shootings, said it was not clear.
“It was hateful, it was wrong. It was carried out by an individual, not a faith,” Ardern said. “He alone carries the responsibility for these acts. It would be wrong to direct any frustration to anyone beyond this individual.”
A video posted on social media showed shoppers in the supermarket seconds after the attacker struck. “There’s someone here with a knife … he’s got a knife,” a woman can be heard saying. “Somebody got stabbed.” A guard asked people to leave the shopping centre soon before about 10 quick shots rang out.
