SYDNEY, Australia: At least 12 people have been killed and almost 30 wounded when gunmen fired on a Jewish holiday event at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Sunday in what Australian police and officials described as a terrorist attack.
One suspected gunman was killed and another was in a critical condition, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told a press conference. At least 29 people injured, including two police officers, were taken to hospital, he said.
Police were investigating whether a third gunman was involved in the shooting, and a bomb-disposal unit was working on several suspected improvised explosive devices, Lanyon said.
Mike Burgess, a top Australian intelligence official, said one of the suspected attackers was known to authorities but had not been deemed an immediate threat.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the incident "shocking and distressing", adding that "emergency responders are on the ground and working to save lives".
"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.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he was appalled by the shooting.
One of the world's most famous beaches, Bondi is typically crowded with locals and tourists, especially on warm weekend evenings.
"If we were targeted deliberately in this way, it's something of 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 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 are heard. One video shows a man dressed in a black shirt firing a large weapon before being tackled by a man in a white T-shirt who wrestles his weapon off him. A different man is seen firing a weapon from a pedestrian bridge.
Another video shows two men pressed onto the ground by uniformed police on a small pedestrian bridge. Officers canb be seen trying to resuscitate one of the men. Reuters could not immediately verify the footage.
The attack came almost exactly 11 years after a lone gunman took 18 people hostage at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney. Two hostages and the gunman were killed after a 16-hour standoff.
Sunday's shootings were the most serious of a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars in Australia since the beginning of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023.
Mass shootings are rare in Australia, one of the world's safest countries. Sunday's attack was the worst such incident in the country since 1996, when a gunman killed 35 people at a tourist site in the southern state of Tasmania. – Reuters
