At site of second shooting, Muslim worshippers want to return to prayers immediately

Razia Khan stood on the edge of the footpath, inconsolable.

It was the closest she could safely get to the Linwood Mosque, where she had come to pay her respects to seven dead worshippers.

The mosque, in a shabby, yellow hall behind an empty gravel lot is still cordoned off after the massacre in Christchurch last Friday, forcing mourners to grieve from across the street.

Armed police are still stationed outside.

Khan, from Auckland, lost her imam Hafiz Musa Patel inside the mosque. He was a well-known Islamic scholar who knew the Koran by heart and had spread its message in the Pacific for 30 years.

"How can someone do this?" said Khan, through tears. "All these innocent people. I can't believe it. They were just praying."

Exactly a week after the shootings, 300 people crowded around the cordon, stood on grass verges and filled a petrol station forecourt for the Muslim call to prayer and a two-minute silence. At the end, a female police officer sang a short waiata.

Some people played audio on their mobile phones of the prayer being recited across the city at Hagley Park.

Linwood Mosque services some of Christchurch's poorer suburbs. Much of its congregation is made up of taxi drivers, fast-food staff and construction workers. It has been returned by police to the imam, who wants to reopen it for prayers quickly - possibly tomorrow.

Fei Hussan, who attended the mosque but was not there last Friday, said the congregation was looking forward to returning.

"We want to reclaim it," he said. "It is everything to us. It is our belief. It is our mosque. It's the place that we worship."

"For those who were there that memory won't be wiped too easily," said Amin Ruhani, whose cousin was killed in the shootings. "They will always feel it."

Ayaz Khan, from Auckland, waved his hand at the piles of flowers and hundreds of people marking the moment of silence. The terrorist had not succeeded, he said.

"We are now bigger and stronger. We succeeded more than the terrorist.

"It means a lot that we lost 50 lives, we won't forget that. But we won the battle."