RAMALLAH, Friday, March 15, 2019 (WAFA) – Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the killing of 49 people in mass shooting at two mosques full of worshippers attending Friday prayers in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.

“This terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 49 Muslims who were performing the noon Friday prayer at two mosques in New Zealand was committed as a result of extremist ideology that sows the seeds of religious wars,” said Erekat in his condemnation letter.

He added that he extends his “prayers, thoughts and tears” as well as those of the Palestinian people, Christians and Muslims, to the people of New Zealand, particularly the families of the victims.

Erekat urged an end for the killings perpetrated in the name of religion and denounced the “use of religion for political ends”, recalling past attacks targeting places of worship, including Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994 and the assault on a Pittsburgh synagogue last year.

A total of 49 people have been killed and over 40 other wounded in two mosque shootings in Christchurch city, in New Zealand, during Friday prayers, in what New Zealand‘s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said to have been a well-planned "terrorist attack."

K.F.