New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed to toughen anti-terror laws following Friday's knife attack in Auckland by a man who was under police surveillance.
The man, a Sri Lankan national, stabbed seven people in a supermarket. Three of them are in a critical condition.
The attacker, a known supporter of Islamic State, was shot dead by police.
He has now been identified as Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and sought refugee status.
Ardern, who described the stabbings as a "terrorist attack", says she expected that changes to the country's counter-terrorism legislation would be backed by parliament by the end of September.
The legislation is expected to make it easier to convict someone for planning a terror attack.
Samsudeen had been arrested a number of times before Friday's incident. But Ardern says that every legal avenue to keep him out of the community had been exhausted.
[Source: BBC]
