New Zealand shooter emotionless as victims' families address sentencing hearing

The man who killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019 looked his surviving victims and their families in the eye on Monday as they recounted the horror of a massacre.

Australian national Brenton Tarrant has pleaded guilty to 51 murders, 40 attempted murders and one charge of committing a terrorist act during the shooting rampage in the city of Christchurch.

He faces life in prison possibly without parole in what would be a first for New Zealand, when a High Court judge sentences him later this week for carrying out the deadliest shooting in the country's history.

Handcuffed and dressed in grey prison clothes, Tarrant sat with hands clasped for most of the first morning of his sentencing hearings. He showed little emotion, and looked directly at those delivering victim impact statements.

The mother of Ata Elayyan, who was slain in the shootings, told the hearing that losing her son was like feeling the pain of labour all over again.

Gamal Fouda, imam of Al Noor mosque, told Tarrant that he was "misguided and misled".

The attacks prompted a global outpouring of grief as well as scrutiny, with regulations imposed on online platforms after the then 28-year-old live-streamed the mosque shootings shortly after uploading a manifesto.

Crown prosecutor Barnaby Hawes said Tarrant told police after his arrest that he regretted not taking more lives and revealed that he intended to burn the mosques down after the shootings.

Tarrant fired "two precisely aimed shots" at three-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim who was clinging to his father's leg, Hawes said. Ibrahim was the youngest victim of the shootings.

The shooter spent years purchasing high-powered firearms, researched mosque layouts by flying a drone over his primary target, and timed his attacks to maximise casualties, the prosecutor said.