Australian authorities are investigating a terrorist mass shooting at the "Chanukah by the Sea" Hanukkah celebration near
Bondi Beach in Sydney, where two gunmen killed sixteen people, including one attacker, and wounded about forty in what officials describe as a deliberate antisemitic assault on the Jewish community and the country’s deadliest shooting in almost three decades. Political, religious and cultural figures including
Anthony Albanese,
Chris Minns,
Donald Trump,
Benjamin Netanyahu,
Isaac Herzog,
Emmanuel Macron,
Marco Rubio,
Ashton Kutcher,
Mandy Moore,
Rebel Wilson,
Dave Portnoy,
Alex Edelman,
Robert Gregory, and eyewitnesses such as
Ebonny Munro and
Arsen Ostrovsky condemned the massacre and praised the extraordinary courage of unarmed fruit seller
Ahmed al Ahmed, who wrestled a pump-action shotgun away from the older attacker under fire on a pedestrian bridge.
New South Wales police under Commissioner
Mal Lanyon, supported by intelligence chief
Mike Burgess and counterterrorism units, declared a terrorist incident, raided the Bonnyrigg home of Pakistani suspect
Naveed Akram, recovered an explosive device from a car, confirmed that one attacker had been known to security services, coordinated with international partners after
Israel reported a citizen among the dead, and oversaw heightened security at Jewish sites worldwide during Hanukkah as mourners noted that the victims included a beloved rabbi and a Holocaust survivor who died shielding his wife.