Two gunmen opened fire from a bridge overlooking 1,000 people attending a Sunday night event on a popular Australia beach commemorating the first day of Hanukkah, killing 11 and wounding 29.
One of the two shooters was also killed, and the second is in critical condition, according to police in New South Wales.
Two of the injured in the Bondi Beach attack, which took place at 6:42 p.m. local time – 4:42 a.m. ET – are police officers.
Among the dead: Eli Schlanger, a rabbi.
“Our heart bleeds for Australia’s Jewish community tonight. I can only imagine the pain that they’re feeling right now, to see their loved ones killed as they celebrate this ancient holiday,” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said, adding that local police have designated the shooting as a “terrorism event.”
“This attack was designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah,” Minns said.
Mass shootings in Australia are rare, because Australia reacted to a deadly mass shooting in the 1990s with the enactment and enforcement of strict gun-control laws.
The shooting on Sunday is, in fact, the deadliest since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in which a gunman killed 35 and wounded 23.
The Bondi Beach attack could have been much worse – video from the scene shows a bystander sneaking up behind one of the shooters firing from a car park near the bridge overlooking the scene, putting him in a bear hug and wrestling the shooter’s long rifle away.
This move bought time for police to reach the scene and fire shots at the disarmed gunman and his accomplice.
“That man is a genuine hero, and I’ve got no doubt there are many, many people alive tonight as a result of his bravery,” Minns said.
The mass shooting is the latest in a string of antisemitic attacks in Australia since the beginning of the Israeli military-led genocide in Gaza in 2023.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the Bondi Beach attack to hit at Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for his support for Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu, in a speech condemning the shooting on Sunday, said he had written a letter to Albanese in August that the Australian government’s support for Palestinian statewhood was, in effect, promoting and encouraging antisemitism.
“I wrote: ‘Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets’,” Netanyahu said.
In the speech, Netanyahu accused the Australian government of “doing nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia.”
“You let the disease spread, and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today,” Netanyahu said.
Update: Sunday, 12:49 p.m. The man who disarmed one of the gunmen in the horrific attack on a Jewish festival in Sydney, Australia, has been identified as Ahmed al Ahmed, a 43-year-old fruit shop owner.
Ahmed, a father of two and a Muslim, was shot twice by the second attacker after disarming the first man.
Update: Sunday, 4:51 p.m. Police are now saying 15 people attending a Jewish festival on a popular Sydney beach were killed, and 42 were injured, updating the totals for both the dead and injured from earlier.
One of the two shooters who perpetrated the Sunday night attack was killed in a shootout with police.
The shooters have been identified as a 50-year-old father and 24-year-old son, both Pakistani nationals from Sydney.
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Chris Graham
