Christchurch terror attack: 'I don't have it in my heart to forgive him' - daughter of survivor

The daughter of one of the survivors of the Christchurch terror attack says she will never forgive the attacker.

Zahra Ditta's father was at the front of Al Noor Mosque when he heard the gun shots.

He yelled out, "it's a gun, run" and he tried to smash open the glass door to the left, Ditta told The AM Show .

He did smash it, but he tripped and about 10 more people tripped and fell on top of him.

"They got bullet wounds and passed away, but he was at the bottom so he got a bullet to the leg and was able to crawl out of the mosque."

A man driving past picked up Ditta's father, along with others, and rushed them to hospital.

"He was covered in blood."

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Ditta says, after feeling numbness and shock, her community is now angry and the questions are coming.

"Why?" She asks, "Why has this happened to us?"

While a senior leader at the Deans Ave Mosque who lost his wife in the terror attack says he has forgiven the shooter, Ditta says she never will.

Farid Ahmed said the extraordinary gesture to the man who killed so many of his friends is what his wife would have wanted.

But Ditta says she doesn't think she can ever forgive the gunman.

"I don't have it in my heart to forgive him. I don't think I can ever forgive him for doing that to us when we were in such a vulnerable position.

"We were praying. We had our heads down in devotion about to pray and for someone to come up behind us and start shooting at our most vulnerable - I can't understand it."

Ditta says racism exists and her Muslim community has experienced racism, but never to the stage when "we thought our lives would be on the line".

"It's going to take a very, very long time for us to rebuild and be the same again," Ditta told The AM Show.

Newshub.