Father-son duo allegedly behind Sydney’s Bondi Beach shooting; 10-year-old girl among 16 dead

SYDNEY – Australian police said on Dec 15 that the alleged gunmen

behind an attack at a Jewish celebration

in Sydney’s ​Bondi Beach that killed 15 people were a father-and-son duo.

It was the country’s worst gun attack in about 30 years.

The father, a 50-year-old, was also killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital, police said at a press conference on Dec 15.

The father and son were identified as Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram, respectively, by state broadcaster ABC and other local media outlets.

Witnesses said the shooting at the famed beach, which was packed on a hot evening, lasted about 10 minutes, sending hundreds of people scattering along the sand and into nearby streets ​and parks.

Police said around 1,000 people had attended the Hanukkah event, which was held in a small park off the beach.

A bystander captured on video tackling and disarming an armed man during the attack has been hailed as a hero whose actions saved lives. Channel Seven named him as Ahmed al Ahmed, citing a relative, who said the 43-year-old fruit shop owner was shot twice and had undergone surgery.

A fund-raising page for the man had raised more than A$200,000 (S$172,000) by the morning of Dec 15.

Police did not release the shooters’ names, but said the father had held a firearms licence since 2015 and had six licensed weapons.

Home Minister Tony Burke said the father arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, while his son is an Australia-born citizen.

Police did not provide details about the firearms, but videos from the scene showed the men firing what appeared to be a bolt-action rifle and a shotgun.

“We are very much working through the background of both persons. At this stage, we know very little about them,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters.

Bondi local Morgan Gabriel, 27, said she had been heading to a nearby cinema when she heard what she thought were fireworks, before people started running up her street.

“I sheltered about six or seven. Two of them were actually my close friends, and the rest were just people that were on the street. But their phones had been left down the beach, and everyone was just trying to get away,” she said.

“It’s a very sad time this morning... Normally, like on a Monday or any morning, it’s packed. People are swimming, surfing, running. So this is very, very quiet. And there’s definitely a solemn sort of vibe.”

Police raided the home of the alleged attackers late on Dec 14. At the suspects’ home in Bonnyrigg, a suburb around 36km west of the Central Business District, there was a heavy police presence on Dec 15, with a cordon wrapping around several neighbouring houses.

Police said that 40 people remain in hospital following ​the attack, including two police officers who are in a serious but stable condition.

The victims who died were aged between 10 and 87, police said. Among them were a rabbi who was a father of five, a Holocaust survivor, a Slovak woman and a 10-year-old girl.

The authorities said they were confident that there were two offenders involved in the Dec 14 incident. Police investigations are ongoing, and police numbers were increased in Jewish communities on the morning of Dec 15.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Bondi Beach on the morning of Dec 15 and laid flowers near the scene of the attack, while some mourners wearing kippah, or skullcaps worn by some Jewish men, were seen placing candles and setting up tribute sites.

Mr Albanese earlier called the attack a “dark moment for our nation”, and said police and security agencies were thoroughly checking the motive behind the attack.

“What we ​saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location,” he told reporters.

“The Jewish community are hurting today. Today, all Australians wrap our arms around them and say – we stand with you. We will do whatever is necessary to stamp out anti-Semitism. It is a scourge, and we will eradicate it together.”

Mr Albanese said on Dec 15 that Australia will lower flags to half-mast in a national gesture of mourning for those killed in the mass shooting.

“Flags will fly at half-mast across the country today as we pay our respects to all those lost and all those injured.”

The Prime Minister later urged Australians to light a candle in solidarity with the Jewish community, “to show that light will indeed defeat darkness – part of what Hanukkah celebrates”, he said.

Mourners paid respects and laid flowers at a makeshift memorial at the Bondi Pavilion draped in Israeli and Australian flags as police and private Jewish security guards patrolled the area.

Mr Albanese said several world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, had reached out, and he thanked them for their solidarity.

“In Australia, there was a terrible attack... and that was an anti-Semitic attack obviously,” Mr Trump said during a Christmas reception at the White House on Dec 14, paying his respects to victims of the Bondi attack and

another shooting at Rhode Island’s Brown University

.

The Dec 14 shooting was the most serious in a string of anti-Semitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars in Australia since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had warned Mr Albanese that Australia’s support for Palestinian statehood would fuel anti-Semitism.

“Saw bodies on the ground”

Hundreds of police personnel were at Bondi Beach on Dec 15 as the suburb’s main road remained closed after being declared a crime scene.

Rabbi Mendel Kastel, whose brother-in-law Eli Schlanger was killed in the Dec 14 attack, said it had been a harrowing evening.

“You can very easily become very angry and try to blame people, turn on people, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about a community,” he said.

“We need to step up at a time like this, be there for each other, and come together. And we will, and we will get through this, and we know that. The Australian community will help us do it,” he added.

Local resident Danielle, who declined to give her surname, was at the beach when the shooting occurred and raced to collect her daughter, who was attending a bar mitzvah at a function centre near where the alleged shooters were positioned.

“I heard there was a shooting, so I bolted there to get my daughter. I could hear gunshots, I saw bodies on the ground. We are used to being scared, we have felt this way since Oct 7.”

Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct 7, 2023,

killing around 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.

The attack precipitated Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health authorities.

Australia’s Jewish diaspora is small but deeply embedded in the wider community, with about 150,000 people who identify as Jewish in the country of 27 million.

About one-third of them are estimated to live in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, including Bondi.

Major cities, including Berlin, London and New York, stepped up security around Hanukkah events on Dec 14 following the Bondi attack. REUTERS, AFP