Worshippers gunned down before his eyes
Imam speaks of the horror inside Christchurch mosque
Gamal Fouda was about five minutes into delivering his sermon from his elevated pulpit to 200 worshippers when some of them started jumping and shouting after what sounded like three gunshots.
He wondered if it was some of the youngsters playing around or noise coming from the sound system, the Al Noor Mosque imam tearfully told the Herald in his first interview since Friday afternoon’s terror attack.
But another shot was fired, and an Algerian man yelled, “Yeah. Shooting!” before he smashed a window.
“Then the shooting started heavily,” said Fouda, who ducked down and hid from the diminutive figure wearing a helmet, glasses, and military-style clothing and firing a semi-automatic weapon.
“People ran towards the big hole [in the glass]. Most of the people, they run through the window. That’s why on this right side [of the building] only a few people were killed. But the left side, they fell on each other and they piled on top of each other. He was just standing and aiming at them.
“Whenever he heard any noise coming from anywhere he would shoot towards it,” Fouda said.
“When he would run out of bullets, we were not sure if he had left because there was silence.
“We thought he was hiding, waiting . . . we were not able to see him,” Fouda said.
“He came back and he started shooting again. Those people who came out from [hiding], he shot them again. Because we didn’t know he was coming back.”
Many who escaped hid in the mosque’s rear carpark while others jumped fences to safety. One person who was trying to phone 111 was spotted by the gunman and shot.
Fouda hid with others in the main mosque room throughout the shooting which left 42 people dead.
He assumes the shooter didn’t know that the women were hiding in a separate room, saving their lives. Some women who tried to flee were gunned down.
The gunman finally left, to jump back into his car and race across the city to attack the Linwood Mosque — where eight were killed.
Fouda, Egyptian-born and trained, spoke to the Herald alongside fellow Christchurch imam Alabi Lateef Zirullah, who survived the Linwood Mosque massacre.
At Linwood, there were about 80 worshippers, said Zirullah.
The killer started shooting outside the mosque about 1.55pm, gunning down a man and wife outside. Zirullah was inside.
“I just told our brothers, ‘Go down! Go down! Somebody has just shot our brothers outside the masjid’,” Zirullah said.
“No one listened to me until unfortunately he came from behind and he shot one of our brothers [in] the head through the window.”
Zirullah rushed outside, along with fellow worshipper Abdul Aziz, who picked up a credit card machine, yelling “come here”.
The gunman ran back to his car to get another gun and Aziz hurled the credit card machine at him.
As Zirullah tried to lock the main door to keep the worshippers inside safe, Aziz, whose two children aged 11 and 5 were still inside, weaved through parked cars as the gunman fired shots at him.
Aziz then spotted the gunman’s discarded gun, picked it up and squeezed the trigger but it was empty.
The gunman ran back to the car for a second time.
“He gets into his car and I just got the gun and threw it on his window like an arrow and blasted his window,” Aziz said.
He said the gunman was cursing at him, yelling that he was going to kill them all. But he drove away and Aziz said he chased the car down the street to a red light, before it made a U-turn and sped away. Online videos indicate police officers managed to force the car from the road and drag out the suspect soon after.
Zirullah then started calling emergency services and tried to help the dying and wounded.
Fouda feels that those who have died — “May Allah give them peace” — have now passed into a better place, “to a world of justice, better than a world of injustice”.
“I would like to send my sincere condolences to all New Zealanders. [Friday] was a war against all Muslims but I consider it [a war] against all New Zealand and New Zealanders.”
‘[Friday] was a war against all Muslims but I consider it [a war] against all New Zealand . . . ’
Imam Gamal Fouda