A pair of father-and-son gunmen killed at least 15 people in a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday, officials said. At least 42 people were hospitalized.
The elder gunman, 50, was shot and killed by police. His 24-year-old son was wounded and remains hospitalized. “We are satisfied that there were two offenders involved,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said. “We are not looking for a further offender.”
Among the dead were a 10-year-old and a 40-year-old man who died at the hospital, according to New South Wales police. The attack occurred about 6:45 p.m. local time, when emergency services were called after reports of shots fired. Two police officers were also injured by gunfire. Hundreds had gathered at the popular beach for Chanukah by the Sea, an event marking the start of Hanukkah.
Two basic improvised explosive devices were found at the scene and were described as active by Commissioner Lanyon.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the shooting a “targeted attack against Jewish Australians” and labeled it a “terrorist incident.” “An attack on Jewish Australians is an attack on every Australian,” he said, adding there is no place for such hate, violence and terrorism in the nation.
Chabad, the Orthodox Jewish movement that organized the event, identified one of the dead as Rabbi Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and a key organizer.
Video filmed by onlookers appeared to show two gunmen with long guns firing from a footbridge leading to the beach. One clip broadcast on Australian television showed a civilian tackling and disarming an alleged gunman.
Mass shootings are rare in Australia, in large part because of strict gun laws adopted after the country’s worst mass shooting in 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur, Tasmania. This Bondi attack is the country’s first deadly mass shooting since 2022, when six people, including two police officers, were shot in a suspected ambush as officers responded to a missing-persons report.
International reactions included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blaming Australia’s government for failing to stop a rise in antisemitism, saying he had warned Prime Minister Albanese that actions such as recognizing a Palestinian state could encourage “Jew hatred.” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar expressed Israel’s “pain and sorrow” and pointed to a surge in antisemitism in Australia since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
There has been a recent spike in antisemitic incidents in Australia, including arson. In August, Prime Minister Albanese blamed Iran for two attacks and cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the shooting “a heinous deadly attack on Jewish families,” and Israeli President Isaac Herzog urged Australia to take action against what he described as an enormous wave of antisemitism.