New Zealand rugby star Sonny Bill Williams pays tearful tribute to Christchurch mosque attack victims

Sonny Bill Williams was the first Muslim to represent the All Blacks. (AFP)
Updated 15 March 2019
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New Zealand rugby star Sonny Bill Williams pays tearful tribute to Christchurch mosque attack victims

CHRISTCHURCH: Tearful rugby star Sonny Bill Williams said he hoped the victims of the Christchurch mosque massacre were in "paradise" in an emotional video tribute on Friday.
The devout Muslim wiped away tears several times in the brief footage which he filmed sitting in a car.
Police reported multiple deaths in attacks on two crowded mosques during Friday prayers in Christchurch, where Williams played for the Crusaders earlier in his career.
"Just heard the news. I couldn't put it into words how I'm feeling right now," the World Cup-winning All Blacks centre said in the video posted on Twitter.
"Inshallah (God willing) everyone who's been killed today... you guys are all in paradise," he added.
"Just deeply, deeply saddened that this would happen in New Zealand."


UN Security Council plans emergency meeting on Ukraine Monday

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UN Security Council plans emergency meeting on Ukraine Monday

UN: The UN Security Council will meet Monday to discuss Ukraine, a revised scheduled showed, after Kyiv’s mayor urged residents to leave the capital due to mass heating outages caused by Russian strikes.
“The Russian Federation has reached an appalling new level of war crimes and crimes against humanity by its terror against civilians,” Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk said in a letter to the Security Council seen by AFP on Friday.
The latest strikes left half of the residential buildings in Kyiv without heating in sub-zero temperatures, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said.
The Kremlin also confirmed firing an Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine for the second time since the war began in February 2022.
“The Russian Federation regime officially claims that it used an intermediate-range ballistic missile, the so-called ‘Oreshnik’, against the Lviv region,” the ambassador’s letter continued.
“Such a strike represents a grave and unprecedented threat to the security of the European continent.”
Moscow claims the Oreshnik, which can be equipped with both nuclear and conventional warheads, is impossible to stop
Ukraine’s request for the emergency UNSC meeting was supported by six members — France, Latvia, Denmark, Greece, Liberia and the United Kingdom — diplomatic sources told AFP.