Twelve people have been killed in Australia’s worst terrorist attack, as gunmen opened fire on Jews who had gathered on Sunday evening to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach.
The shooting was a “targeted attack” on the Jewish community, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference late in the evening. He described the incident as an “act of diabolical anti-Semitism, of terrorism that struck at the heart of our nation,” and highlighted an uncompromising crackdown on anti-Semitism.
“We will eradicate it,” he said.
Australia’s Jewish population was estimated at 116,967 in 2021, one of the ten largest in the world. Bondi, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, is one of the country’s largest Jewish communities.
One of the gunmen is dead and a second is in a critical condition in hospital, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters at a news conference, where he described the incident as a terrorist attack. At least 29 people, including two police officers, were injured and taken to hospitals in Sydney, he added.
It was the deadliest mass shooting in Australia since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, on April 28, 1996.
“There are nights that tear the soul of our nation,” Albanese said. “In this moment of darkness, we must be each other’s light.”
The gunmen opened fire shortly after 6:45 p.m. local time as more than 1,000 people attended the Hanukkah event by the sea on a hot summer evening.
One of the victims said he had only arrived in Australia in recent days from Israel, where he had lived for 13 years, to help Sydney’s Jewish community deal with anti-Semitic incidents. Speaking to Channel Nine television, his face bloodied and his head wrapped in bandages, he said the community would come together even more in the wake of the shooting.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. showed footage of two gunmen dressed in black shooting at people from a walkway near the beach. In another unconfirmed clip, a bystander is shown tackling and disarming one of the gunmen – actions that New South Wales Premier Chris Minns called truly heroic, saying the intervention likely saved many lives.
An improvised explosive device was found in a car linked to the dead offender, Police Commissioner Lanyon said. Police are also investigating whether there was a third offender, he added.
Mike Burgess, director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, said the national level of terrorism remained “likely” despite Sunday’s incident.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said the shootings “are the result of the anti-Semitic rampage on the streets of Australia over the past two years,” adding that “the Australian government, which has received countless warning signals, must come to its senses!”
Speaking at an event recognizing the extraordinary achievements of immigrants to Israel at the presidential residence in Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the shooting was a “cruel attack on Jews who went to light the first Hanukkah candle on Bondi Beach.”
Several synagogues in Australia, as well as Jewish businesses and property owners, have been targeted following the outbreak of conflict in Gaza sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
In October last year, two masked men set fire to Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi after dousing it with accelerant. The following month, attackers painted anti-Israel graffiti and set fire to a vehicle in Woollahra – a suburb with a large Jewish community – damaging more than 10 cars and several buildings.
Last December, offenders broke into the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea, Victoria, and spread accelerant in what police described as a probable terrorist attack. A few days later, another graffiti and arson attack targeted a street in Woollahra, selected by the perpetrators because it was considered a Jewish neighborhood.
Around the same time, around 20 members of a neo-Nazi group gathered outside a Melbourne government building with a banner reading “Jews Hate Freedom.”
This year, Albanese said Australia had uncovered intelligence that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had directed at least two of last year’s arsons – including the Bondi restaurant and Melbourne synagogue incidents – prompting Canberra to expel Iran’s ambassador, its first such action since World War II.
Gun crimes
The Bondi attack has refocused attention on the shortcomings of Australia’s gun control framework, a system often cited as a model internationally. However, it remains marked by uneven implementation.
A January report from the Australia Institute found that not all states and territories were meeting basic criteria for effective monitoring, including transparent reporting of data and limits on the number of firearms an individual can legally own.
The Australia Institute report also showed how concentrated gun ownership has become: the average license holder owns more than four guns, and two suburban Sydney residents hold more than 300 each.
Using dashboards to rank jurisdictions based on metrics such as property caps and data availability, the Institute rated New South Wales – home to Sydney – as the best performer on transparency, although wider national gaps persist.
