At least 15 people were killed after a mass shooting during a Hanukkah event at Australia’s Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday. Officials in Australia are vowing to further tighten the country’s already strict gun laws after what they said was a terrorist attack targeting Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah.
On Sunday, December 14th, at 18:47 local time (07:47 GMT), police received reports that shots had been fired at a park in Bondi Beach.
Footage verified by the BBC appears to show two gunmen firing from a small bridge near a car park on Campbell Parade, on the northern end of Bondi Beach. They are firing down towards an area of parkland where the Hanukkah event was taking place.
The family of British-born Rabbi Eli Schlanger, 41, told the BBC he was among the dead. He had helped organise the Hanukkah event, Jewish organisation Chabad said.
The ruling class has declared the shooting a terrorist attack and said it was specifically “designed to target” Jewish people. Victims included a Holocaust survivor, a 10-year-old, and two rabbis, accoridng to a report by NBC News.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that the government would also be interested in tightening up the gun laws and would like to work to eradicate antisemitism in response to this shooting.
The two gunmen were identified by police as father and son. The pair have since been named by local media as Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24. The older gunman was shot dead by police, while his son is in a critical condition in the hospital. Two Islamic State (IS) flags were found in the gunmen’s car, a senior official told ABC News, as reported by the BBC.
Mass shootings in Australia are very rare. The attack at Bondi Beach is the country’s deadliest incident since 1996, when a gunman killed 35 people during the Port Arthur massacre.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not blaming the guns for the shooting. He’s placing the blame on Australia’s ruling class because it backs Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu claims that this has fueled antisemitism in the country.
Australia’s response is to tighten already strict gun control laws. Are they also going to consider tightening the murder laws, too?