A true one massacre happened in the last few hours on Sydney’s most popular beach, in Australia. Two armed men At least eleven people were shot this Sunday while a Jewish holiday was being celebrated there. One of the shooters was killed by police and the second was arrested.
According to authorities, the suspect was in critical condition. A major emergency operation was underway with injured people being loaded into ambulances. In addition, police were working to defuse an explosive device they found in one of the shooters’ car.
“Tonight at 9:36 p.m. I officially declared this fact a terrorist incidentMal Lanyon, the police commissioner of New South Wales state, where Sydney is located, said in a press conference. He explained that special powers had been activated to ensure “there is no additional threat to the community.”
At least 29 people were injuredLanyon said. Two of them were police officers.
“This attack targeted Sydney’s Jewish community,” said state Premier Chris Minns. The massacre was classified as a terrorist attack because of the targeted event and the weapons used, Lanyon said.
Hundreds of people They had gathered for an event on Bondi Beach called Hanukkah by the Seawhich celebrated the beginning of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
Dramatic footage apparently filmed by a witness and broadcast on Australian television channels showed someone appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen before pointing the man’s gun at him.
Lachlan Moran, 32, of Melbourne, was waiting nearby for his family when he heard gunshots, he told The Associated Press. He dropped the beer he was carrying for his brother and ran. “Some shots were heard and I got scared and ran away. (…) I started running. I just had this intuition. I ran as fast as I could,” he said. He said he heard gunshots intermittently for about five minutes.
🚨At least seven were shot dead near Bondi Beach Park in Australia. New South Wales Police responded quickly and arrested two people – one is said to have been shot by officers and the other was arrested.
📽️1: The Shootout
📽️2: The 2 shooters
📽️3: Brave civilian disarms a shooter
📷: One of the shooters pic.twitter.com/oJrAYcCpwS—Saikiran Kannan | 赛基兰坎南 (@saikirankannan) December 14, 2025
“Everyone just dropped everything they had and ran and people were crying and it was just horrible,” Moran added.
Police said their operation was “underway” and that “several suspicious objects in the area” were being examined by specialist officers, including an improvised explosive device found in the car of one of the suspects. According to police, emergency services were called to Campbell Parade at around 6.45pm to reports of shots fired.
Local media spoke to affected and bloodied passers-by who witnessed the event. Lanyon said the death toll from the shooting was “variable” and that injured people were still being hospitalized.
“Tonight our hearts hurt for the Jewish community of Australia,” Minns told reporters in Sydney. “I can only imagine the pain they feel now as they see their loved ones murdered while celebrating this ancient holiday.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement that his thoughts were with everyone affected.
“The scenes in Bondi are shocking and disturbing,” he said. “Police and emergency services are on scene and working to save lives.”
Mass shooting deaths in Australia are extremely rare. A 1996 massacre in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, in which a lone gunman killed 35 people, prompted the government to dramatically tighten gun laws and made it much more difficult for Australians to purchase firearms.
Significant mass shootings this century included two murder-suicides in which five people were killed in 2014 and seven in 2018 in which gunmen killed themselves and their own families.
In 2022, two police officers were shot dead by Christian extremists on a rural property in Queensland state. The three shooters in that incident, police-hating conspiracy theorists, were also shot dead by officers along with one of their neighbors after a six-hour siege in the Wieambilla region.
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