Ardern says supermarket stabbing was 'terrorist attack'

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said that an attack in which a ‘violent extremist’ stabbed and wounded at least six people in an Auckland supermarket was ‘a terrorist attack’.

Ardern said that the Sri Lankan national, who was under police surveillance, was inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group and that it was carried out by ‘an individual, not a faith’.

The unnamed man reportedly took a large knife from a display cabinet in the Countdown store at LynnMall, in the New Lynn district of Auckland, and went on a stabbing spree. Surveillance teams had been close by the entire time. Police killed the man within 60 seconds of the attack.

Ardern did confirm that the man, whose identity cannot be revealed due to court suppression orders, had arrived in New Zealand in October 2011 and became a person of national security interest in 2016. He had been under constant monitoring and heavy surveillance due to concerns about his ideology. He was known to multiple agencies and was also on a terror watchlist.

Until the attack, Ardern said that he had not committed any offences that would lead to arrest or detention.