As the bullets tore into worshippers during Friday prayers at Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, taxi driver AbdulKadir Ababora from Ethiopia threw himself to the floor and wedged himself under a bookshelf used to hold Korans, praying he would see his wife and kids again.
Somehow that decision saved his life and he emerged from the carnage unscathed.
“It’s just a miracle,” he said on Sunday as he revisited the scene. “When I woke up to the left and right of me it was just dead bodies.”
A Nigerian, Alabi Lateef was also a survivor of the massacre at Linwood Masjid, the second mosque attacked by white terrorist Brenton Tarrant.
Lateef narrated how a worshipper at the mosque seized an empty rifle discarded by Tarrant and then used it to chase him away.
Lateef said he was praying with others when he heard the sound of gunfire.
“Straight away I stopped my prayer, I peek through the window and I found a person with, you know, machine gun and heavy dress,” he told news website Stuff. “By the time I peeked on the floor I see two, three dead bodies. Then realised oh, this must be something else. This is a terrorist attack.”
Ethiopian Abdulkadir saved by a Koranic bookshelf during New Zealand mosque attack
He told worshippers to duck down and then described how a “brother” decided to confront the attacker during a lull in the gunfire.
“By the time he got there (outside the mosque) the bullets were finished and the gun was used,” Lateef recounted.
The man, identified as Abdul Aziz an Afghan refugee, picked up the machine gun and smashed it into the gunman’s car windscreen. After the gunman ran away, Alabi returned to the mosque.
“I started picking up the bodies to know who was dead and who was alive.”
Lateef said he had never expected to experience a terrorist attack in New Zealand.
“I’m very sad for what has happened, but I believe this country is a peaceful country and I hope something good will happen after that and the security will become tighter.”
The Afghan’s action may have saved further casualties, as Tarrant was apprehended by two armed police officers not far from Linwood mosque soon afterwards while driving his car with a visibly smashed back window.
Back in Al Noor Mosque.
Like so many who attended weekly prayers at the mosque, Ethiopian Ababora had come to New Zealand hoping to find peace and prosperity.
The 48-year-old said he arrived from Ethiopia in 2010 and made a life for himself in the placid city of Canterbury.
Two weeks ago he and his wife celebrated the birth of their second son.
Then on Friday a self-professed white terrorist wielding an armoury of semi-automatic rifles scrawled with racist ideology, walked into the mosque and unleashed a rampage that left at least 50 dead and dozens more with life-changing injuries.
Ababora said the mosque’s imam had just started delivering the English translation of the khutbah — the sermon during Friday prayers — when the gunfire erupted outside.
The first person he saw struck was a Palestinian, a man who was an engineer by training but who, like Abobora, also drove a taxi in the city.
“He walked up just to see what is going on and then he saw the attacker. When he tried to run he shot him somewhere here,” Ababora recalled, pointing to his side. “I saw him falling down.”
Soon Tarrant, the 28-year-old Australian police say carried out the massacre, was inside the prayer hall, pumping round after round into the defenceless worshippers.
Ababora said he instinctively fell to the ground and managed to squeeze himself against a bookshelf that held the Korans worshippers used during prayers. Crucially, it made his body a slightly smaller target.
“I just pretended as if I am dead,” he said.
Ababora said he was sickened at how methodical the killer was, firing round after round into the crumpled pile of bodies in a well-planned attack he later learned was broadcast on Facebook.
“This guy started to shoot randomly, left and right, automatic. And then he finished the first box (magazine) and then he changed it, again automatic. Then he finished the second one, he put the third box, again start automatic in the other room again.”
“This guy started to shoot randomly, left and right, automatic. And then he finished the first box (magazine) and then he changed it, again automatic. Then he finished the second one, he put the third box, again start automatic in the other room again.”
He could feel the shockwaves from the bullets pass by his body.
“I was waiting (for) my moment, when every second (a) shot comes I was saying ‘This is for me. This is for me’. And I lost hope,” he said.
He began to silently pray and think of his family.
The horror was far from over when the gunman departed after emptying a fourth magazine before driving across town to commit a second atrocity at the Linwood mosque.
For an agonising number of minutes afterwards, no one at the Al Noor mosque dared make a sound. But as the pain got too much for the wounded, people started crying out.
The scene in front of Ababora was hellish.
“There was blood everywhere,” he said.
A friend called out, saying he had been shot in the leg. He tried to help him up but the leg was shattered by the bullet.
Ababora staggered outside to find police another worshipper — whose son is friends with his eldest son — alive but with horrific injuries. He had been shot in the jaw, his hand and his back.
It was only after laying the man down he noticed two more bodies — two women lying in a pool of blood.
“They were late comers,” he explained. “When he (the gunman) finished everyone in the mosque and he came out to escape, these ladies were late, and he shot them. Bang. Bang.”
Close by was one of the gunman’s discarded rifles and Ababora said he instantly recognised “Nazi” symbols written on it as well as historic places and dates celebrated by the far-right such as the Battle of Vienna in 1683.
“He wrote all the places where Muslims were attacked on the gun, all over the gun.”
Like most of Christchurch’s inhabitants, Ababora said he never believed such hatred would arrive on his doorstep.
“We used to say New Zealand is safe, especially in Christchurch we say we are safe, it’s a trusting system here. The Muslims here, we are the most quiet people,” he said, adding the mosques in the city don’t even broadcast the call to prayer.
“New Zealand is not safe any more,” he concluded. “This is brutal.”
