Police stated 16 individuals are useless after gunmen focused the attendees of a Jewish group occasion on Sunday in Australia’s Bondi Seashore. One other 40 individuals had been hospitalized with accidents, together with a baby and two officers, based on police. One suspected gunman was additionally killed. He was recognized as Naveed Akram, 24, a Pakistani nationwide based mostly in Sydney, based on a U.S. intelligence briefing and a driver’s license offered by Australian police.
Australian officers and worldwide leaders have condemned it as an antisemitic terrorist assault.
Police stated they anticipate the loss of life toll to climb. Here’s what we all know up to now.
Gunfire broke out at a Hanukkah celebration
The assault passed off throughout a Jewish vacation celebration held to mark the primary day of Hanukkah. Greater than 1,000 individuals had been on the seashore, in a suburb of Sydney, when photographs rang out, stated New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon, who formally declared the taking pictures a “terrorist incident.”
Quite a few Australian officers have characterised the taking pictures as focused. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns stated it “was designed to focus on Sydney’s Jewish group.”
“It is a focused assault on Jewish Australians on the primary day of Hanukkah — which ought to be a day of pleasure, a celebration of religion — an act of evil antisemitism, terrorism, that has struck the center of our nation,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated at a information convention.
Video footage recorded by civilians confirmed frightened crowds of beachgoers fleeing the world as gunshots went off within the background.
Neither officers nor police have recognized the victims of the assault. Chabad, a world group representing a department of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, stated Rabbi Eli Schlanger, with Chabad of Bondi, was among the many useless, the Related Press reported. Schlanger had been a key organizer of the Hanukkah occasion on Bondi Seashore, based on the group.
At the least two suspects
Australian authorities have stated not less than two gunmen had been suspected of finishing up the lethal mass taking pictures, a uncommon incidence in a rustic the place gun violence is rare.
Lanyon stated the deceased suspect was beforehand identified to the New South Wales police power. Along with the gunman killed on the scene of the assault, one other was hospitalized with severe accidents, he stated. The surviving gunman has been taken into custody. The commissioner additionally stated officers had been investigating whether or not a “third offender” was concerned.
A person has been lauded as a hero and praised by the police commissioner for tackling one suspect and disarming him in dramatic video footage recorded by a bystander alongside Campbell Parade, a fundamental avenue that wraps round Bondi Seashore. Within the footage, the person might be seen crouched in hiding behind a parked automotive earlier than wrestling the suspect and taking his weapon.
Australian information shops have recognized the person seen disarming the suspect as fruit store proprietor Ahmed al Ahmed, citing his kin.
Officers discovered explosive gadgets
Shortly after the taking pictures passed off, officers who responded to the scene found a automobile alongside Campbell Parade and believed there have been a number of improvised explosive gadgets inside it, Lanyon stated. The automobile was linked to the deceased gunman, based on the police commissioner. A rescue bomb disposal crew was on the scene.
Rising antisemitism in Australia
Though Australia not often experiences mass shootings, after implementing stringent gun reform legal guidelines within the wake of a lethal 1996 bloodbath in Tasmania’s Port Arthur, antisemitic incidents have been on the rise within the nation because the conflict in Gaza started in 2023.
The Australian authorities appointed particular envoys in 2024 to handle spiking antisemitism, in addition to Islamophobia, in its communities. However assaults nonetheless occurred this yr. One, in July, concerned an arsonist who set fireplace to the door of a synagogue in Melbourne, whereas worshippers had been inside.
World leaders react
The assault on Bondi Seashore drew widespread condemnation from leaders throughout the globe.
Within the U.S., Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke out towards antisemitism in a social media put up, which stated: “Antisemitism has no place on this world. Our prayers are with the victims of this horrific assault, the Jewish group, and the individuals of Australia.”
Rubio joined officers from quite a few international locations, together with the UK, France, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, India, Qatar and Pakistan, who equally shared remarks expressing sympathy for the victims and solidarity with Jewish communities, in addition to denouncing antisemitism.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was among the many officers in his nation who responded publicly to the assault in Australia. In a assertion launched by his workplace, Netanyahu criticized Albanese for supporting a Palestinian state and stated such help fuels antisemitism.
“Your name for a Palestinian state pours gasoline on the antisemitic fireplace,” Netanyahu’s assertion learn, quoting a letter that the Israeli prime minister stated he wrote to Albanese in August. “It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those that menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”
The American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group and charity group, stated the assault “comes after repeated warnings, together with from the Australian Jewish group itself,” including that “permitting antisemitic rhetoric and demonstrations to go unchecked can—and does—result in violence and loss of life.”
