Twelve people killed in Bondi Beach Hanukkah terror attack

Twelve people have been killed in Australia’s worst terrorist attack, as gunmen opened fire on Jewish people who had gathered to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach on Sunday evening. 

The shooting was a “targeted attack” on the Jewish community, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a late-night press conference. He described the incident as an “act of evil anti-Semitism, terrorism that has struck the heart of our nation,” and flagged an uncompromising crackdown on anti-Semitism. 

“We will eradicate it,” he said. 

Australia’s Jewish population was estimated to be 116,967 in 2021, one of the world’s 10 largest. Bondi, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, is among key Jewish communities in the nation. 

One of the gunmen is dead and a second is in a critical condition in the hospital, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters at a media conference, where he designated the incident as a terrorist attack. At least 29 people, including two police officers, were injured and taken to hospitals across Sydney, he added. 

The incident is Australia’s deadliest mass-shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania on April 28, 1996.  

“There are nights that tear at our nation’s soul,” Albanese said. “In this moment of darkness, we must be each other’s light.”

The gunmen opened fire just after 6:45 p.m. local time as more than 1,000 people attended the Chanukah by the Sea event on a warm summer evening. 

One of the victims said he only arrived in Australia in recent days from Israel, where he had lived for 13 years, to help the Jewish community in Sydney cope with anti-Semitic incidents. Speaking with Channel Nine television, his face bloodied and head swathed in bandages, he said the community would pull even closer together in the wake of the shootings.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. showed footage of two black-clad gunmen firing on people from a footbridge near the beach. In another unconfirmed clip, a bystander is shown tackling and disarming one of the gunmen — actions that New South Wales Premier Chris Minns described as genuinely heroic, saying the intervention likely saved many lives. 

An improvised explosive device was found in a car linked to the dead offender, Police Commissioner Lanyon said. Police are also investigating whether there was a third offender, he said. 

Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, said the national terror level rating remains at “probable” despite Sunday’s incident.

Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar said the shootings “are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years,” adding that “the Australian government, which received countless warning signs, must come to its senses!” 

Speaking at an event recognizing the extraordinary achievements of immigrants to Israel at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the shooting was a “cruel attack on Jews who went to light the first candle of Chanukah on Bondi Beach.”

Several synagogues in Australia, along with Jewish businesses and homeowners, have been targeted following the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. 

In October last year, two masked men torched Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi after dousing it with accelerant. The following month, assailants sprayed anti-Israel graffiti and set a vehicle alight in Woollahra — a suburb with a large Jewish community — damaging more than 10 cars and several buildings.

Last December, offenders broke into the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea, Victoria, and spread accelerant in what police described as a probable terrorist attack. Days later, another graffiti-and-arson attack targeted a street in Woollahra that perpetrators selected because it was considered a Jewish area.

Around the same time, about 20 members of a neo-Nazi group gathered outside a Melbourne government building with a banner reading “Jews hate freedom.”

This year, Albanese said Australia uncovered intelligence that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps directed at least two of last year’s arson attacks — including the Bondi restaurant and Melbourne synagogue incidents — prompting Canberra to expel Iran’s ambassador, its first such move since World War II.

Gun Crimes

The Bondi attack has refocused attention on gaps in Australia’s gun-control framework, a system often cited internationally as a model. However, it’s still marked by uneven implementation.

A January report from the Australia Institute found that all states and territories fell short on core benchmarks for effective oversight, including transparent data reporting and limits on how many firearms an individual can legally own.

The Australia Institute report also showed how concentrated gun ownership has become: the average license holder owns more than four firearms, and two residents in suburban Sydney hold upward of 300 each.

Using scorecards to rank jurisdictions on measures such as ownership caps and data availability, the Institute assessed New South Wales — home to Sydney — as the strongest performer on transparency, even as broader national shortcomings persist.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com