Six people were injured in an attack by an unknown buyer on a supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand. Three of them are in critical condition, RNZ radio reported.
Earlier, police said that the suspect was shot dead by law enforcement officers and died from his injuries. There were also reports of four wounded.
BREAKING: *Stabbing* New Zealand police shot dead a man after he entered an Auckland supermarket and stabbed multiple people, with at least six reported injured pic.twitter.com/c0d9nJCq2Z
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) September 3, 2021
A video shared on social networks shows supermarket buyers warning each other about a “man with a knife”, after which shots are heard in the store, the newspaper reports.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the incident as an act of terrorism, the work of a radical extremist.
“A brutal extremist committed a terrorist act (…) It was a brutal attack that made no sense,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference in Wellington.
The perpetrator is a citizen of Sri Lanka and has lived in New Zealand since 2011. He has been in the spotlight since 2016.
“He was a supporter of the ideology of the Islamic State,” Ardern said.