Gunmen kill at least 11 people in attack on Jewish holiday event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach

Two gun­men at­tacked a Han­nukah cel­e­bra­tion on a Syd­ney beach Sun­day, killing at least 11 peo­ple in what Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Al­banese called an act of an­ti­semitism and ter­ror­ism.

The mas­sacre at one of Aus­tralia’s most pop­u­lar and icon­ic beach­es fol­lowed a wave of an­ti­se­mit­ic at­tacks that have roiled the coun­try over the past year, al­though the au­thor­i­ties didn’t sug­gest those episodes and Sun­day’s shoot­ing were con­nect­ed. It is the dead­liest shoot­ing for al­most three decades in a coun­try with strict gun con­trol laws.

One gun­man was fa­tal­ly shot by po­lice and the sec­ond, who was ar­rest­ed, was in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, au­thor­i­ties said. Po­lice said one of the gun­men was known to the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, but that there had been no spe­cif­ic threat.

At least 29 peo­ple were con­firmed wound­ed, in­clud­ing two po­lice of­fi­cers, said Mal Lany­on, the po­lice com­mis­sion­er for New South Wales state, where Syd­ney is lo­cat­ed.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers were ex­am­in­ing a num­ber of sus­pi­cious items, in­clud­ing sev­er­al im­pro­vised ex­plo­sive de­vices found in one of the sus­pect’s cars.

The shoot­ing tar­get­ed a Jew­ish cel­e­bra­tion

“This at­tack was de­signed to tar­get Syd­ney’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty,” the state’s pre­mier, Chris Minns, said. The mas­sacre was de­clared a ter­ror­ist at­tack due to the event tar­get­ed and weapons used, Lany­on said.

Hun­dreds had gath­ered for the Chanukah by the Sea event cel­e­brat­ing the start of the eight-day Hanukkah fes­ti­val.

Chabad, an Or­tho­dox Jew­ish move­ment that runs scores of cen­ters around the world that are pop­u­lar with Jew­ish trav­el­ers and spon­sors large pub­lic events dur­ing ma­jor Jew­ish hol­i­days, iden­ti­fied one of the dead as Rab­bi Eli Schlanger, as­sis­tant rab­bi at Chabad of Bon­di and a key or­ga­niz­er of the event.

Video footage filmed by on­look­ers ap­peared to show two gun­men with long guns fir­ing from a foot­bridge lead­ing to the beach. One dra­mat­ic clip broad­cast on Aus­tralian tele­vi­sion showed a man ap­pear­ing to tack­le and dis­arm one of the gun­men, be­fore point­ing the man’s weapon at him, then set­ting the gun on the ground.

Minns called the man a “gen­uine hero.”

Wit­ness­es fled and hid as shots rang out

Po­lice said emer­gency ser­vices were called to Camp­bell Pa­rade in Bon­di about 6.45 p.m. re­spond­ing to re­ports of shots be­ing fired.

Lach­lan Moran, 32, from Mel­bourne, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press he was wait­ing for his fam­i­ly near­by when he heard shots. He dropped the beer he was car­ry­ing for his broth­er and ran.

“You heard a few pops, and I freaked out and ran away. … I start­ed sprint­ing. I just had that in­tu­ition. I sprint­ed as quick­ly as I could,” Moran said. He said he heard shoot­ing off and on for about five min­utes.

“Every­one just dropped all their pos­ses­sions and every­thing and were run­ning and peo­ple were cry­ing and it was just hor­ri­ble,” Moran said.

The vi­o­lence erupt­ed at the end of a hot sum­mer day when thou­sands had flocked to the beach.

“It was the most per­fect day and then this hap­pened,” said lo­cal res­i­dent Cather­ine Mer­chant.

“Every­one was just run­ning and there were bul­lets and there were so many of them and we were re­al­ly scared,” she told Aus­tralia’s ABC News.

Aus­tralian lead­ers speak of shock and grief

Al­banese told re­porters in the Aus­tralian cap­i­tal, Can­ber­ra, that he was “dev­as­tat­ed” by the mas­sacre.

“This is a tar­get­ed at­tack on Jew­ish Aus­tralians on the first day of Hanukkah, which should be a day of joy, a cel­e­bra­tion of faith. An act of evil, an­ti­semitism, ter­ror­ism that has struck the heart of our na­tion,” Al­banese said.

“Amidst this vile act of vi­o­lence and hate will emerge a mo­ment of na­tion­al uni­ty where Aus­tralians across the board will em­brace their fel­low Aus­tralians of Jew­ish faith,” he said.

World lead­ers ex­pressed con­do­lences. In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di con­demned the “ghast­ly ter­ror­ist at­tack” and of­fered his con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies who lost their loved ones.

British Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer said he was be­ing up­dat­ed on the “ap­palling at­tack.” Po­lice in Lon­don said they would step up se­cu­ri­ty at Jew­ish sites.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio said in a post on X that “The Unit­ed States strong­ly con­demns the ter­ror­ist at­tack in Aus­tralia tar­get­ing a Jew­ish cel­e­bra­tion. An­ti­semitism has no place in this world.”

An­ti­se­mit­ic at­tacks have roiled Aus­tralia

Aus­tralia, a coun­try of 28 mil­lion peo­ple, is home to about 117,000 Jews, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial fig­ures. An­ti­se­mit­ic in­ci­dents, in­clud­ing as­saults, van­dal­ism, threats and in­tim­i­da­tion, surged more than three­fold in the coun­try dur­ing the year af­ter Hamas at­tacked Is­rael on Oct. 7, 2023, and Is­rael launched a war on Hamas in Gaza in re­sponse, the gov­ern­ment’s Spe­cial En­voy to Com­bat An­ti­semitism Jil­lian Se­gal re­port­ed in Ju­ly.

Through­out last sum­mer, the coun­try was rocked by spate of an­ti­se­mit­ic at­tacks in Syd­ney and Mel­bourne. Syn­a­gogues and cars were torched, busi­ness­es and homes graf­fi­tied and Jews at­tacked in those cities, where 85% of the na­tion’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion live.

Al­banese in Au­gust blamed Iran for two of the at­tacks and cut diplo­mat­ic ties to Tehran. The au­thor­i­ties didn’t make such claims about Sun­day’s mas­sacre.

Is­rael urged Aus­tralia’s gov­ern­ment to ad­dress crimes tar­get­ing Jews.

“The heart of the en­tire na­tion of Is­rael miss­es a beat at this very mo­ment,” Is­raeli Pres­i­dent Isaac Her­zog said. “We re­peat our alerts time and time again to the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to seek ac­tion and fight against the enor­mous wave of an­ti­semitism which is plagu­ing Aus­tralian so­ci­ety.”

Shoot­ing deaths in Aus­tralia are rare

Mass shoot­ings in Aus­tralia are ex­treme­ly rare. A 1996 mas­sacre in the Tas­man­ian town of Port Arthur, where a lone gun­man killed 35 peo­ple, prompt­ed the gov­ern­ment to dras­ti­cal­ly tight­en gun laws and made it much more dif­fi­cult for Aus­tralians to ac­quire firearms.

Sig­nif­i­cant mass shoot­ings this cen­tu­ry in­clud­ed two mur­der-sui­cides with death tolls of five peo­ple in 2014, and sev­en in 2018, in which gun­men killed their own fam­i­lies and them­selves.

In 2022, six peo­ple were killed in a shootout be­tween po­lice and Chris­t­ian ex­trem­ists at a rur­al prop­er­ty in Queens­land state.