NZ mosques reopen week after shooting

Smelling of fresh paint, the two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch where a gunman killed 50 worshippers last week reopened their doors yesterday, with many survivors among the first to walk in and pray for those who died.

At the Al Noor mosque, where more than 40 of the victims were killed by a suspected white supremacist, prayers resumed with armed police on site, but no graphic reminders of the mass shooting, New Zealand's worst.

Most victims of the shooting, which New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern quickly denounced as a terrorist attack, were migrants or refugees and their deaths reverberated around the Islamic world.

Police said they were reopening the nearby Linwood mosque, the second to be attacked during Friday prayers last week, as well.