The terror attack in New Zealand claiming 49 lives has equalled the number of victims in the 2016 Orlando nightclub slaughter and is more than the ISIS Tunisia incident.
One of the terrorists who identified himself as Brenton Tarrant, stormed the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on the country’s South Island, to kill 41 defenceless worshippers attending Friday prayers.
At about the same time, there was a second shooting at Masjid Mosque on Linwood Avenue, where seven more were killed – a 49th died in hospital.
On a grisly ranking table the Christchurch Mosque shootings equal Florida’s Orlando nightclub shooting of 2016 and rank above the Sousse resort massacre in Tunisia in 2015, where 38 were killed.
The killer who identified himself as Brenton Tarrant, livestreamed his attack as he stormed the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on the country’s South Island on Friday
People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival as Steven Paddock fires thousands of rounds in October, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada
Flowers are tied to a fence outside the Bataclan venue in November, 2016, one of the targets of the 2015 attacks during which 130 people were killed and another 413 were wounded in Paris
Victims lie on the banks following terror shootings at a summer youth camp on July 22, 2011 on Utoya Island, Norway
Martin Bryant is serving 35 life sentences without the possibility of parole for his massacre at Port Arthur
A victim is taken to hospital by air ambulance after the shooting spree at Port Arthur
The heinous acts have surpassed the Australian Port Arthur atrocity of 1996, when 35 were killed on the island – a former prison colony – as Martin Bryant fired rounds at tourists with an assault rifle.
A shooter stormed the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch on the country’s South Island around 1.30pm, opening fire with a semi-automatic shotgun and a rifle on hundreds of devotees.
A sickening 17-minute video of the unfolding horror shows the self-confessed white supremacist dressed in army fatigues firing mercilessly at people scrambling to flee, and calmly re-loading when he runs out of bullets.
At the Masjid Mosque in the eastern area of the city there was shooting around the same time when seven more were killed – a 49th died in hospital.
Of the 49 fatalities, 41 were killed at the Al Noor Mosque and seven at the Linwood Avenue mosque, three more outside that mosque and a 49th died in hospital.
It was the deadliest mass shooting in New Zealand’s history and is in ninth place as the world’s deadliest shooting.
The worst in Europe was the Paris attack of November 2015 perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, who deployed bombs and guns to claim 130 victims.
Though explosives were also used in these attacks, the primary weapons were Kalashnikov assault rifles, most infamously at the Bataclan venue during a heavy metal concert where 90 were killed.
The United States’s worst attacks were two of the most recent, the Las Vegas country music shooting and the Orlando nightclub shooting.
Steven Paddock let off more than 1,000 rounds as he murdered 58 people and injured hundreds more when he used his Mandalay Bay hotel suite as a vantage point against crowds at a country music show in 2017.
People join hands as they observe a minute’s silence in memory of those killed in a recent attack by an Islamist gunman, at a beach in Sousse in 2015
An injured man is carried out of the Bataclan following fatal shootings in Paris, France in November 2015
Broken windows are seen on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino after Steven Paddock opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest country music in 2017
Eric Paddock holds a photo of himself (left) and his brother, Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock
Terrified country music fans scramble to cover as Paddock rained down terror from his Mandalay Bay room in Las Vegas
Paddock’s attack showed the level of deadly technology available to citizens – with multiple assault rifles and thousands of bullets on hand – proving one man was able to make Las Vegas look like a war-zone.
The Orlando attack on the Pulse gay nightclub of the year before was the deadliest terror attack on US soil since 2001 and perpetrated by 29-year-old Omar Mateen who had pledged allegiance to ISIS.
The fanatic killed 49 people after he had written on Facebook about his sympathies with IS fighters being shelled in Syria and Iraq.
The deadliest shooting on the list not affiliated with Islamic terror was perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik, a white supremacist whose attack on a children’s youth camp on a remote island sickened the world.
Breivik’s assault began on the streets of Oslo with a car-bomb outside the Prime Minister’s offices – killing eight.
It was mercilessly followed by a rampage across the remote island of Utoya where around 600 teenagers of the Norwegian Labour Party’s youth camp were targeted.
Law enforcement officials investigate at the Pulse gay nightclub where Omar Mateen killed 49 people in June 2016
Bullet holes through windows outside the Bataclan concert venue where three gunmen killed 90 people at a rock music concert
Memorial flowers covered by a ribbon with the message, ‘Never Again’ is seen near the Bataclan concert hall the day after a series of deadly attacks in Paris
The neo-Nazi fired hundreds of rounds as he killed 67 people, one more died falling off a cliff, while another died of hypothermia trying to swim off the island.
The targeting of children is a disturbing theme in the depravity shown by mass shooters.
The Sandy Hook shooting of 2012 in Connecticut in the States and the Dunblane Massacre of 1996 in Stirling in Scotland, are seared into our memories.
At Sandy Hook, 20-year-old Adam Lanza cut down 20 children between the ages of six and seven, as well as six members of staff.
At Dunblane Primary School Thomas Hamilton entered the school with pistols as he shot 16 children, a teacher and then himself. It was the UK’s worst attack of its kind.
It caused British legislators to outlaw the possession of handguns.
Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik attends his fourth and last day in court in Skien prison, March 18, 2016
A police officer stands guard at Dunblane primary school in Stirling, Scotland, shortly after the shooting incident on 13 March 1996
People being evacuated on rue Oberkampf near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, in 2015
the Bataclan cafe near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, following a series of terror attacks in and around Paris in November, 2015
The worst in history are claimed by Al-Shabaab gunmen at the Garissa University College in Kenya in 2015. Shooters stormed the campus and slaughtered 148 people.
They took some 700 hostages and used AK-47s to kill those who could not recite the Koran, beheading others with blades.
The massive scale of this terrorism is followed closely by the Peshawar School Massacre in Pakistan in 2014. Taliban shooters killed 141 people – mostly students – in a horrific siege.