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Survivors of the deadly attacks at two New Zealand mosques recalled on Friday diving under benches and fleeing barefoot as the gunman fired for what seemed like an eternity.
Some of the terrified worshipers watched as others were gunned down before their eyes.
“I was thinking that he must run out of bullets, so what I was doing was basically waiting and praying to God, saying, ‘Please run out of bullets,'” witness Ramzan Ali told New Zealand’s Newshub.
Ali said prayers had just begun at Masjid Al Noor mosque near Hagley Park in Christchurch when the shots rang out.
“One guy was sitting there and told me [not to get up]. The next thing I know, the gunman shoots this guy … I know that guy, and he shot him straight in the chest,” Ali recalled.
Ali scrambled under a bench for safety.
“The blood was splashing on me and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen to me now?’ Fortunately, I’m alive,” he said.
Ali told the New Zealand Herald that the shooting stopped — then restarted at least seven times as gunman Brenton Tarrant kept reloading.
He estimated that 300 people were inside the mosque. Forty-one were killed at Masjid Al Noor, while Tarrant slaughtered another seven at Linwood Masjid Mosque a few miles away. One person died at Christchurch Hospital.
“I was the last person to get out of the mosque alive,” said Ali, whose brother Ashraf was in the mosque and was still missing.
Mulki Abdiwahab fled Masjid Al Noor barefoot with her mother.
“I’d never heard a gunshot, ever. I thought at first it must have been somebody banging on the window,” the 18-year-old told TVNZ. “My mom grabbed my hand and then we just, we ran outside. Everyone was in chaos, just running for their lives. We just kept running, and running. The gunshots kept going on for about a good 10 minutes.”
In his lengthy manifesto published online, Tarrant, a 28-year-old personal trainer from Australia, railed against Islam, saying he carried out the attack “to take revenge for the enslavement of millions of Europeans taken from their lands by the Islamic slavers.”
