Shootout: All you need to know about New Zealand mosques massacre

At least 49 people were killed when gunmen said to be whites opened indiscriminate fire at two mosques in Christchurch city on Friday in what a shocked New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said was a terror attack.

Calling the shootings "abhorrent", Christchurch Police Commissioner Mike Bush said 41 people were killed at the Al Noor Mosque near Hagley Park and seven at the Linwood Avenue Mosque. One person died in hospital, The New Zealand Herald reported.

Bush said one man in his late 20s had been charged with murder and the police had recovered a lot of firearms from both the Linwood Avenue and Al Noor Mosque shooting scenes.