Ten people were killed and around a dozen others injured when gunmen opened fire during a Jewish holiday gathering at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, Australian authorities said.
New South Wales police confirmed that two suspects have been taken into custody, while the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that at least one of the attackers was among those killed in the incident.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the attack as “shocking and distressing,” saying emergency responders were on the scene working to save lives. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the attack targeted Jewish community members who had gathered to light the first candle of Hanukkah, condemning the assailants as “vile terrorists.”
Australia has experienced a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he was appalled by the shooting, saying, “these are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realised today”.
“If we were targeted deliberately in this way, it’s something on a scale that none of us could have ever fathomed. It’s a horrific thing,” Alex Ryvchin, Co-Chief Executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told Sky News, adding that his media adviser had been wounded in the attack.
Videos circulating on X appeared to show people on the beach and nearby park scattering as multiple gunshots and police sirens could be heard. One video showed a man dressed in a black shirt firing a large weapon before being tackled by a man in a white shirt who wrestled the weapon off him.
Another video showed two men pressed onto the ground by uniformed police on a small pedestrian bridge. Officers could be seen trying to resuscitate one of the men. “I saw at least 10 people on the ground and blood everywhere,” 30-year-old local Harry Wilson, who witnessed the shooting, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Sussan Ley, leader of Australia’s opposition Liberal Party, said the loss of life in the incident was “significant”. “Australians are in deep mourning tonight, with hateful violence striking at the heart of an iconic Australian community, a place we all know so well and love, Bondi,” she said.
Source: Express Tribune
