By DANIEL PIOTROWSKI IN CHRISTCHURCH FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
One local said what happened behind their properties was simply ‘horrible’.
Now out their back windows are ‘the cars of the dead’.
The neighbour said: ‘They have been simply excellent (neighbours), I do want people to know that’.
All bodies have been removed from the mosque, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said authorities were working as fast as they could to allow relatives to bury their dead loved ones in keeping with Islamic custom.
Police outside the Al Noor mosque continued to sweep the street for evidence on Sunday, marking up cars where bullets may have hit or ricocheted.
It comes as workers at a Christchurch cemetery continue the daunting task of digging graves for the murdered.
Workers used heavy machinery to prepare at least a dozen graves at a cemetery on Saturday afternoon, ahead of the unprecedented number of burials.
They moved swiftly to stay in line with the Islamic custom that dictates the deceased should be buried within 24 hours of their passing.
But local Islamic leaders have admitted they have never seen a burial quite like this.
‘They (the community) is in shock, having to sit down and plan 49 funerals,’ Dr Zain Ali, an Islamic expert at Auckland University, told Daily Mail Australia.
‘They’re just coming to terms with the death of these people. A message went out saying “we need help organising this” … people are just not in a frame of mind’.
A Christchurch Council spokesman has confirmed that ‘the council is currently in the process of getting plots ready’.
The local Muslim community is struggling to come to with the scale of the tragedy and their grief is visible everywhere.
In the city hundreds have left floral tributes and written messages on the pavement at the Masjid Al Noor mosque, where the first shooting occurred on Friday afternoon.
One mourner, Nadia Edmond, 18, wept as she laid flowers, saying she and the city’s young people would not stand for ‘this hatred’.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called the incident one of the country’s ‘darkest days’ and said grants of NZD$10,000 would be available to the families of victims to help cover the cost of funerals.
