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When racist attacker Brenton Tarrant stormed the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch on Friday, little Mucad Ibrahim tried to run away, while his father and big brother pretended they were dead.
The three-year-old was identified yesterday as the youngest victim of the New Zealand mass slaughter in which two mosques were targeted – Al Noor and the nearby Linwood mosque – and at least 49 Muslims were killed.
The boy’s family had been desperately searching for him after the attack, but confirmed his death on Facebook late on Friday, the Daily Mail reported.
Mucad’s big brother, Abdi, said he ran from the mosque as fast as he could and thought his little brother would be at the hospital.
“Verily we belong to God and to Him we shall return,” his family posted. “Will miss you dearly, brother.”
Little Mucad was not the only child gunned down by Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, in his attacks. An unnamed four-year-old was also reported to be among the dead, as was 14-year-old Sayyad Milne.
Among the 39 people being treated for their injuries in hospital is a four-year-old girl in critical condition, while a two-year-old boy and a 13-year-old are in stable conditions.
Tarrant stormed the two mosques, calmly opening fire on about 100 people during their Friday prayers, in an attack he filmed and broadcasted on Facebook Live.
When he appeared in court on Friday under police guard, he made a white supremacist sign with his hands and smirked throughout, repeatedly turning around in the dock to see how many reporters were present and how much attention his attack had garnered.
His 94-year-old grandmother, Joyce, said in an interview that her grandson was a “good boy” whom she last saw at Christmas in their hometown of Grafton in New South Wales, Australia.
He was not on any country’s terror watchlist and had never been sought for any crime.
His mother, Sharon, is a high school teacher who was teaching an English class as her son carried out his attack. When journalists started calling her school, she was pulled out of class and told what had happened.
The family confirmed to police that the man in the footage was their son.
“It is all very shocking, especially [it being] Brenton, he’s a good boy,” Joyce reportedly said.
“He was always nice and kind and was sure to visit us twice a year.”
Joyce said Tarrant, who used to work as a personal trainer and who traded in Bitcoin to fund his extensive travels around the world, showed no signs of extremist ideology when she last spoke to him.
Tarrant also published a 74-page racist manifesto, outlining his extremist views against “the invaders”.
One of Tarrant’s victims, Naeem Rashid, a Pakistan-born man, tried to wrestle the gun away from him during the attack to save other worshippers. Rashid was badly wounded and later died in hospital. His 21-year old son, Talha, was also killed.
Tarrant’s victims hailed from across the Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.
In his manifesto, Tarrant said he was not a member of any organisation and was acting alone. He said he chose New Zealand – where Muslims constitute only 1% of the population – to show that Muslim immigration affects all countries.
While Tarrant carried out his killing spree with weapons emblazoned with white supremacist slogans, he listened to a song glorifying a Bosnian Serb war criminal jailed for killing Bosnian Muslims.
The nationalist Serb song, which emanates from the 1990s Balkan war, glorifies Serbian fighters and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžic, who is now in jail for genocide.
Also on his playlist of death was the song Fire by rock band The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, in which the lead singer yells: “I am the god of hellfire!” – Additional reporting by Daily Mail, CNN, Al-Jazeera
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