Sixteen individuals have been killed in Australia’s worst terrorist assault after gunmen opened hearth on Jewish individuals who had gathered to have fun the primary day of Hanukkah at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Seaside on Sunday night.
The taking pictures was a “focused assault” on the Jewish neighborhood, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated at a late-night press convention. He described the incident as an “act of evil antisemitism, terrorism that has struck the center of our nation,” and flagged an uncompromising crackdown on anti-Semitism.
“We’ll eradicate it,” he stated.
Australia’s Jewish inhabitants was estimated to be 116,967 in 2021, one of many world’s 10 largest. Bondi, in Sydney’s japanese suburbs, is amongst key Jewish communities within the nation.
One of many gunmen is useless and a second is in essential situation within the hospital, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon instructed reporters at a media convention, the place he designated the incident as a terrorist assault.
New South Wales Police Pressure stated in a publish on X Monday native time that 16 individuals have died and one other 40 stay hospitalized following the taking pictures, with two law enforcement officials among the many injured. Lanyon stated early Monday that the shooters had been father and son, and that police weren’t on the lookout for a 3rd offender.
“Bondi Seaside and surrounding roads within the Bondi space might be closed in the present day as investigators proceed to work by means of the crime scene,” the police pressure stated.
The incident is Australia’s deadliest mass taking pictures since a gunman killed 35 individuals at Port Arthur in Tasmania on April 28, 1996.
“There are nights that tear at our nation’s soul,” Albanese stated. “On this second of darkness, we should be one another’s mild.”
The gunmen opened hearth simply after 6:45 p.m. native time as greater than 1,000 individuals attended the Chanukah by the Sea occasion on a heat summer time night.
One of many victims stated he solely arrived in Australia in current days from Israel, the place he had lived for 13 years, to assist the Jewish neighborhood in Sydney deal with antisemitic incidents. Talking with Channel 9 tv, his face bloodied and head swathed in bandages, he stated the neighborhood would pull even nearer collectively within the wake of the shootings.
Australian Broadcasting Corp. confirmed footage of two black-clad gunmen firing on individuals from a footbridge close to the seaside. In one other unconfirmed clip, a bystander is proven tackling and disarming one of many gunmen — actions that New South Wales Premier Chris Minns described as genuinely heroic, saying the intervention doubtless saved many lives.
An improvised explosive system was present in a automobile linked to the useless offender, Police Commissioner Lanyon stated. Police are additionally investigating whether or not there was a 3rd offender, he stated.
Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Safety Intelligence Organisation, stated the nationwide terror stage ranking stays at “possible” regardless of Sunday’s incident.
Israeli International Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar stated the shootings “are the outcomes of the antisemitic rampage within the streets of Australia over the previous two years,” including that “the Australian authorities, which obtained numerous warning indicators, should come to its senses!”
Talking at an occasion recognizing the extraordinary achievements of immigrants to Israel on the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated the taking pictures was a “merciless assault on Jews who went to mild the primary candle of Chanukah on Bondi Seaside.”
A number of synagogues in Australia, together with Jewish companies and owners, have been focused following the outbreak of the battle in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel.
In October 2024, two masked males torched Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi after dousing it with accelerant. The next month, assailants sprayed anti-Israel graffiti and set a automobile alight in Woollahra — a suburb with a big Jewish neighborhood — damaging greater than 10 automobiles and several other buildings.
Final December, offenders broke into the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea, Victoria, and unfold accelerant in what police described as a possible terrorist assault. Days later, one other graffiti-and-arson assault focused a avenue in Woollahra that perpetrators chosen as a result of it was thought-about a Jewish space.
Across the similar time, about 20 members of a neo-Nazi group gathered outdoors a Melbourne authorities constructing with a banner studying “Jews hate freedom.”
This 12 months, Albanese stated Australia uncovered intelligence that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps directed a minimum of two of final 12 months’s arson assaults — together with the Bondi restaurant and Melbourne synagogue incidents — prompting Canberra to expel Iran’s ambassador, its first such transfer since World Warfare II.
Gun Crimes
The Bondi assault has refocused consideration on gaps in Australia’s gun-control framework, a system typically cited internationally as a mannequin. Nevertheless, it’s nonetheless marked by uneven implementation.
A January report from the Australia Institute discovered that every one states and territories fell brief on core benchmarks for efficient oversight, together with clear information reporting and limits on what number of firearms a person can legally personal.
The Australia Institute report additionally confirmed how concentrated gun possession has grow to be: the typical license holder owns greater than 4 firearms, and two residents in suburban Sydney maintain upward of 300 every.
Utilizing scorecards to rank jurisdictions on measures reminiscent of possession caps and information availability, the Institute assessed New South Wales — house to Sydney — because the strongest performer on transparency, whilst broader nationwide shortcomings persist.
