New Zealand: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are struggling to halt the spread of horrific footage that appears to show a massacre at a mosque in New Zealand as it was taking place.
Dozens of people were killed Friday in shootings at two Mosques in the city of Christchurch.
One of the shooters appears to have livestreamed the attack on Facebook. The disturbing video, which has not been verified by press, ran for nearly 17 minutes and purportedly shows the gunman walking into a mosque and opening fire.
“New Zealand Police alerted us to a video on Facebook shortly after the livestream commenced and we quickly removed both the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and the video,” Mia Garlick, Facebook’s director of policy for Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement.
Facebook declined further comment on when exactly it took down the video below.
Forty-nine people were killed in shootings at two mosques in the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch on Friday in what the prime minister described as a terrorist attack, calling it one of the darkest days in the country’s history.
A 28-year-old man has been charged with murder and is expected to appear in a Christchurch court on Saturday morning, police said. Australian government officials identified him as Brenton Tarrant, an Australian citizen.
