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A father and son opened fire on a Jewish festival at Australia’s Bondi Beach in a shooting spree that killed 15 people, including a child, authorities said on Monday, denouncing the attack as antisemitic “terrorism”. The pair fired into crowds packing the world-famous Sydney beach for the start of Hanukkah on Sunday evening, sending people fleeing in panic.
A ten-year-old girl was among those killed in Australia’s worst mass shooting for almost three decades. Another 42 people were rushed to hospitals with gunshot wounds and other injuries.
Police are still unravelling what drove the shootings, although authorities have said the plot was clearly designed to sow terror among the nation’s Jews.
“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of antisemitism, an act of terrorism on our shores,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said before laying flowers at the Bondi Pavilion.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said the father and son had possible links to the Islamic State group.
The gunmen targeted an annual celebration that drew more than 1,000 people to the beach to mark the Jewish festival. They took aim from a footbridge looking over the beach, which was packed with swimmers cooling off on a steamy summer evening. Carrying long-barrelled guns, they peppered the area with bullets for 10 minutes before police shot and killed the 50-year-old father.
The 24-year-old son was arrested and remained under guard in hospital with serious injuries. Police later found a homemade bomb in a car parked close to the beach, saying the “improvised explosive device” had likely been planted by the pair.
“We want to get to the bottom of this. We want to understand the motives behind it,” said New South Wales police commissioner Mal Lanyon.
Misinformation spread quickly online in the wake of the attack, some of it targeting immigrants and the Muslim community.
Police also said they had responded to reports on Monday morning of several pigs’ heads being left at a Muslim cemetery in southwestern Sydney.
A brave few dashed towards the beach as the shooting unfolded, wading through fleeing crowds to rescue children, treat the wounded and confront the gunmen. Footage showed one man, identified by local media as fruit seller Ahmed al Ahmed, grabbing one of the gunmen as he fired. The 43-year-old wrestled the gun out of the attacker’s hands, before pointing the weapon at him as he backed away.
A team of off-duty lifeguards sprinted across the sand to drag children to safety. Bleeding victims were carried across the beach atop surfboards turned into makeshift stretchers.
A grassy hill overlooking Bondi Beach was strewn on Monday with discarded items from people fleeing the killing, including a camping table and blankets. People gathered flip-flops, sneakers and thermos flasks and lined them up in the sand for collection.
Australia mourned the dead by lowering flags to half-mast.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Australia’s government of “pouring oil on the fire of antisemitism” in the months leading up to the shooting.
A string of antisemitic attacks has spread fear among Jewish communities in Australia following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Other world leaders expressed revulsion and condemnation, including in the United States where President Donald Trump said it was a “purely antisemitic attack”.
The Australian government accused Iran this year of orchestrating a recent wave of antisemitic attacks and expelled Tehran’s ambassador nearly four months ago. Tehran directed the torching of a kosher cafe in Sydney’s Bondi suburb in October 2024, and a major arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December 2024, the government said in August citing intelligence findings.
Mass shootings have been rare in Australia since a lone gunman killed 35 people in the tourist town of Port Arthur in 1996. The “Port Arthur massacre” led to sweeping reforms, but Albanese said tougher gun laws may be needed after the latest attack.
