New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced a royal commission into the events leading up to the deadly Christchurch terror attack that killed 50 people earlier this month.

Speaking 10 days after two mosques were targeted in a mass shooting, Ms Ardern said the commission would look at "the events leading up to the attack, rather than the response".

"While New Zealanders and Muslim communities around the world are both grieving and showing compassion for one another, they are also quite rightly asking questions on how this terror attack was able to happen here," she said.

"This includes questions around the accessibility of semi-automatic weapons, the role social media has played generally and the focus of the intelligence and security services.

Ms Ardern said the agencies welcomed the "independent oversight and investigation", but said the main focus would be on whether more could have been done to identify and stop the perpetrator ahead of time.

"It is important that no stone is left unturned to get to the bottom of how this act of terrorism occurred and what, if any, opportunities we had to stop it," she said.

"Are our surveillance laws too soft? One question we need to answer is whether or not we could or should have known more.

"New Zealand is not a surveillance state. But questions need to be answered around whether or not this was the activity of an individual that we could or should have known about.

Source: ABC News

BDST: 1541 HRS, MAR 25, 2019
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