WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) – According to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, an Islamic State-inspired assailant stabbed six people at a New Zealand supermarket on Friday before being shot dead by police who had him under surveillance.
The guy, a Sri Lankan national who came in New Zealand in 2011 and was on a terror alert, allegedly entered a shopping centre in suburban Auckland, snatched a knife off a display, and went on a stabbing rampage, according to Ardern.
Six people were injured, three of them seriously, she claimed, before police who were watching him opened fire 60 seconds after the incident began.
“What happened today was despicable, hateful, and wrong,” she said, adding that it did not represent any religion or community.
When asked about the man’s reasons, she stated, “It was a violent ideology and ISIS-inspired,” referring to the Islamic State organisation by another name.
Due to court suppression orders, Ardern said she was constrained in what she could say publicly about the guy, who had been under observation since 2016.
According to Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, officials were satisfied that the individual was operating alone and that the community was not in any danger.
The Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, in which a white supremacist shooter killed 51 Muslim worshipers and seriously injured another 40, were New Zealand’s deadliest terror incident.