A father and his son have been identified as the perpetrators of a deadly shooting at a Jewish festival in Sydney’s Bondi Beach that claimed 15 lives, including a child, in what authorities described on Monday as an antisemitic act of terrorism.
The assailants opened fire on Sunday evening as crowds gathered at the popular beach to celebrate the start of Hanukkah, sending revellers and tourists fleeing in panic across the area.
Among those killed was a 10-year-old girl, while no fewer than 42 others sustained gunshot wounds and related injuries and were rushed to hospital. The incident is Australia’s worst mass shooting in almost three decades.
Security agencies said investigations were ongoing to determine the motive behind the attack, but officials maintained that the operation was clearly aimed at instilling fear within the country’s Jewish community.
“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of antisemitism, an act of terrorism on our shores,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday, before laying flowers at the Bondi Pavillion.
The gunmen reportedly targeted an annual celebration that attracted more than 1,000 people to the beach.
Taking position on a raised boardwalk overlooking the shoreline, they fired into a crowd of swimmers and families enjoying a hot summer evening.
Armed with long-barrelled firearms, the pair reportedly shot for about 10 minutes before police intervened, killing the 50-year-old father.
His 24-year-old son was arrested and remains under police guard in hospital with serious injuries.
Rabbi Mendel Kastel confirmed that his brother-in-law was among those killed.
“It’s unbelievable that this has happened here in Australia, but we need to hold strong. This is not the Australia that we know. This is not the Australia that we want.”
Police, citing security concerns, declined to disclose details about the attackers’ religion or ideological leanings.
“We want to get to the bottom of this. We want to understand the motives behind it,” New South Wales police commissioner Mal Lanyon said on Monday.
Hours after the shooting, investigators discovered a homemade bomb in a car parked near the beach, which they said was likely planted by the suspects.
Eyewitness accounts highlighted scenes of courage amid chaos, as some bystanders ran toward the gunfire to rescue children and assist the wounded.
Footage circulating online showed a man identified by local media as fruit seller Ahmed al Ahmed grappling with one of the attackers and wresting a gun from him as shots were being fired.
Off-duty lifeguards were also seen racing across the sand to pull children from a playground and administer first aid to victims.
“The team ran out under fire to try and clear children from the playground while the gunmen were firing,” said Steven Pearce from Surf Life Saving New South Wales.
“They were able to get the children inside,” he told AFP.
“The other lifesavers went out and started trying to do CPR on the shot victims, and tried to drag as many inside as they could.”
Several victims were carried across the beach on surfboards used as makeshift stretchers.
French national Alban Baton, 23, said he hid for several hours inside a grocery store cold room as the situation unfolded.
“Minute after minute, we were starting to realise what was happening,” he told AFP.
By Monday, the hillside overlooking Bondi Beach was littered with abandoned personal belongings, including blankets, footwear and picnic items left behind by fleeing beachgoers. Volunteers later gathered and lined them up in the sand for collection.
Australia marked the tragedy by lowering flags to half-mast nationwide.
In the aftermath, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Australian government of “pouring oil on the fire of antisemitism” in the months preceding the shooting.
A series of antisemitic incidents has heightened anxiety among Jewish communities in Australia since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. World leaders also condemned the Bondi attack, including in the United States where President Donald Trump described it as a “purely antisemitic attack”.
Mass shootings have remained rare in Australia since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which prompted sweeping gun control reforms.
However, Albanese said the latest tragedy could necessitate tougher firearms laws.
Police disclosed that the father legally owned six licensed firearms, which are believed to have been used in the attack.
The Australian government has previously accused Iran of orchestrating a wave of antisemitic attacks in the country and expelled Tehran’s ambassador earlier this year.
Authorities said intelligence findings linked Iran to the torching of a kosher café in Sydney’s Bondi suburb in October 2024 and an arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December 2024.
Iran’s foreign ministry, which has long supported the Palestinian militant group Hamas, nonetheless condemned Sunday’s “violent attack in Sydney.”