Bangladesh cricket players were just about to visit the Al Noor Mosque to offer their Namaz in the afternoon before heading towards practice. When the shooting began in the Mosque none of the players were inside the mosque and all were safely carried to the Hagley Oval Stadium. The incident took place around 1.45pm local time (Christchurch time).
The team bus was a few meters away from the massacre when the players had heard the gunshots for the first time, and Bangladesh Cricket board also tweeted that all the players are safe and later were taken to their hotel.
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“We couldn’t react initially. In such a horrible situation, your brain automatically freezes as you are terrified. That’s exactly happened to all of us,” Bangladesh cricket team’s Performance Analyst Shrinivas Chandrasekaran (Indian), who was in the bus, told PTI over the telephone from the team hotel in Christchurch.
Bangladesh Cricket Board spokesman Jalal Yunus said most of the team were bussed to the mosque and were about to go inside when the incident happened. “They are safe. But they are mentally shocked. We have asked the team to stay confined in the hotel,” he told AFP.
The New Zealand Cricket Board along with the Bangladesh Cricket Board came to a joint decision to cancel the third Test which was supposed to be played on 15th March. The players will be returning to their home very soon.
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Bangladesh team manager Khaled Mashud also expressed the horror of being involved in such a ghastly incident and said that they were lucky to escape it as only two of the team members had stayed back at the hotel, while the rest 17 were on the bus. He said, “This was a kind of accident that we would never expect nor want in any part of the world. We are very lucky because we had a number of us, about 17 of us, on the bus. Only two of the players had stayed back in the hotel, and rest of the squad had gone there. We were very close to the mosque, and we could see from the bus. We must have been about 50 yards from the mosque.”
New Zealand Police confirmed the death toll in the Christchurch mosque shootings has risen to 49 and 48 were injured one person has been charged with the murder.
What has happened in Christchurch is an extraordinary act of unprecedented violence. It has no place in New Zealand. Many of those affected will be members of our migrant communities – New Zealand is their home – they are us.
— Jacinda Ardern (@jacindaardern) March 15, 2019
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern calls it the darkest day for New Zealand and also Police Commissioner Mike Bush said four people have been arrested in connection with the attacks on the two mosques, reports from CNN says.
