Melbourne, Australia — A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach obtained firearms training in New South Wales state outside Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.
The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.
The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.
Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs and two homemade ISIS flags wrapped in blankets.
Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.
Australian police
The largest IED was found after the gun battle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.
Authorities had been looking into a month-long trip by the father and son to the Philippines, where there’s been a decades-long Islamist insurgency in the south of the country.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last week that the attack was inspired by ISIS, and there is an ISIS-affiliated militant group operating in a remote area of the Philippines.
But a receptionist at a hotel in Davao City told CBS News the attackers never left their room for more than a day.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to (ISIS),” police said.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.
Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.
The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals Monday.
A world-first social media ban took effect in Australia last week, restricting children younger than 16 from using platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
“Australia has become an international guinea pig for the people who want internet censorship,” said Hon. John Ruddick, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council.
A 13-year-old boy displays a message on his mobile phone from social media platform Snapchat after his account was locked for age verification in Sydney on December 9, 2025. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
The 10 social media giants included in the ban are Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, Snapchat, Kick, Reddit, Threads, Twitch and YouTube. By law, they are required to locate and deactivate accounts of Australian users under the age of 16.
“I have heard that every playground around Australia for months has been talking about censorship coming,” Ruddick told Fox News Digital.
Children and parents won’t be penalized for violating the ban, but social media companies face fines of up to $33 million if they don’t take “reasonable steps” to remove underage users.
Many Aussie children, Ruddick said, are already finding ways to skirt the sweeping ban.
“They’re getting around it through fake IDs, opening new apps — which you know are popping up — VPNs,” he explained. “Kids are tech-savvy… This is what we predicted would happen.”
A teenager gets a notification from Instagram after the account was locked for age verification in Sydney on December 9, 2025. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Ruddick, alongside two Australian teenagers, is taking legal action over the ban, filing a constitutional challenge to Australia’s High Court. Equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court can overturn laws it deems unconstitutional.
Ruddick told Fox News Digital he believes the social media ban violates young Australians’ right to political communication.
“We’re saying that this is breaching young kids’ ability to engage in politics, and a lot of them will be voting within two years of turning the age of 16,” he explained.
The Australian politician is the president of the Digital Freedom Project, a group launched to raise public awareness about the ban that he calls a “dangerous violation” of free speech.
A judgment on their constitutional challenge is expected in March or April 2026.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during an official function to mark the start of Australia’s social media reform at Kirrilbilli House in Sydney on Dec. 10, 2025. (DAVID GRAY / AFP via Getty Images)
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the ban is about shielding children from the harmful effects of social media.
Albanese said Wednesday that the nation is taking a leading role in challenging major tech platforms and demanding accountability for how social media impacts children’s well-being.
“It’s a profound reform which will continue to reverberate around the world in coming months, to assist not just this generation, but generations to come,” Albanese said.
The politician counters Albanese’s argument, saying the ban will create the “worst of both worlds,” with children turning to dangerous underground media platforms while parents let their guard down, assuming the ban is protecting them.
US lawmakers are being probed on whether a social media ban could come to America.(J. David Ake/Getty Images)
Back in the U.S., lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are signaling an interest in tougher social media restrictions for young people following the Aussies’ one-of-a-kind ban.
“I think we ought to look at what Australia’s doing, for example, requiring access to these social media platforms to not be available to anybody under the age of 16,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said.
“I think protecting children is an avenue that should be pursued,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. “I won’t rule out some sort of limitation in sales or distribution or use of those devices… Parents and grandparents need a helping hand; this is getting out of hand.”
Social media giants like Meta could face multi-million-dollar fines if they fail to ban underage Australian users.(Anna Barclay/Getty Images)
Ruddick warned that Australia’s ban is making “very prominent people” interested in a dangerous strategy of censorship.
“I was assuming that the U.S. First Amendment was going to protect you from this,” the politician told Fox News Digital. “But this is why I think we’re a guinea pig. We’re having very prominent people all around the world coming out and supporting this ban.”
“They’re going to try and say it’s a success, and then they’re going to say, ‘Oh, the rest of the world needs to do this.’ This is not about protecting kids. This is about internet censorship, which all governments crave,” he added.
Nora Moriarty is a Production Assistant at FOX News.
Sydney — Australia will use a sweeping buyback scheme to “get guns off our streets,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday, showing his government was keen to take quick action less than a week after a terrorist attack left 15 people dead at a Jewish holiday gathering on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach.
Sajid Akram and his son Naveed are accused of opening fire on the festival, which was organized to mark the first day of Hanukkah on Sunday, in what was one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings.
“There is no reason someone living in the suburbs of Sydney needed this many guns,” he said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett are seen on Dec. 19, 2025, in Canberra, Australia, during a news conference in the wake of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty
Australia would pay gun owners to surrender “surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms.”
Albanese said Monday that his government was “prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws.” He specifically suggested measures that could limit the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain, and mandating a review process for existing licenses.
The prime minister said the federal government would evenly split the cost of the buyback program with Australia’s state and territorial administrations, with further details to be worked out when lawmakers return to work next week.
Investigation continues as Sydney remains on high alert
Sajid Akram, 50, was killed in a gunfight with police, but his 24-year-old son Naveed survived. The unemployed bricklayer was charged earlier this week with 15 counts of murder, an act of terrorism, and dozens of other serious crimes after waking up from a coma in a Sydney hospital.
Albanese said the attack was inspired by ISIS ideology, and Australian police are still investigating whether the pair may have met with Islamist extremists during a visit to the Philippines just a couple weeks before the shooting.
They spent most of November in the south of the Asian nation, in a hotel in Davao City. A hotel employee told CBS News on Thursday that the father and son extended their stay week by week and paid in cash, and that they would go out during the day but return to the hotel every night, often bringing food back to eat in their room.
He said staff noticed nothing particularly suspicious about the men during their nearly monthlong stay.
A view of the GV Hotel, where Sajid and Naveed Akram, suspects in the Bondi Beach terror attack, stayed in November, as seen on Dec. 18, 2025, in Davao City, in the southern Philippines.
Ezra Acayan/Getty
Sydney, meanwhile, remains on high alert almost a week after the shootings.
Armed police released seven men from custody on Friday, a day after detaining them on a tip they may have been plotting a “violent act,” as they reportedly headed for Bondi Beach.
Police said there was no established link with the alleged Bondi gunmen and “no immediate safety risk to the community.”
A second major Australian gun buyback spurred by a mass shooting
The new buyback, assuming it is approved by lawmakers next week, will be the largest such government-funded program since 1996, when then-Prime Minister John Howard cracked down on firearms in the wake of another mass shooting, in which 35 people were killed in the town of Port Arthur.
Just 12 days after that attack, Australian lawmakers approved legislation banning the sale and importation of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns; forcing people to present a legitimate reason, and wait 28 days, to buy any firearm, and initiating the massive, mandatory gun-buyback for banned weapons.
The government confiscated and destroyed nearly 700,000 firearms in the wake of the law’s adoption, reducing the number of gun-owning households by half.
“It is incontestable that gun-related homicides have fallen quite significantly in Australia,” former premier Howard, who defied many in his own conservative party to usher in the 1996 law, told CBS News’ Seth Doane two decades later, in 2016.
A Sept. 8, 1996 file photo shows Norm Legg, a project supervisor with a local security firm, holding an ArmaLite rifle similar to the one used in the Port Arthur mass shooting, which was handed in for scrap in Melbourne as part of a mandatory government gun buyback program after the attack.
WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty
In the 15 years before those laws were passed, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia. In the two decades after, there wasn’t a single one. Gun homicides overall decreased by nearly 60% in the same period.
Asked to respond to critics who said the fall in gun deaths did not necessarily happen because of the legislation, Howard told CBS News: “The number of deaths from mass shootings, gun-related homicide has fallen, gun related suicide has fallen … Isn’t that evidence? Or are we expected to believe that that was all magically going to happen? Come on!”
A study published earlier this year, however, found Australia still has some way to go to fully implement the 2016 legislation, called the National Firearms Agreement. The paper, by the Australia Institute think tank, said some of the measures had yet to be brought into force 29 years later, and others were being inconsistently enforced across different states.
The law “was ambitious, politically brave, and necessary for public safety,” the report concluded, lauding Howard’s will to defy his fellow lawmakers.
But “Australia still allows minors to hold firearm licenses, still lacks a National Firearms Register, and still has inconsistent laws that make enforcement difficult,” the group said, adding that overall gun ownership across the country had actually boomed over the last three decades.
“There are now over four million registered privately owned guns in Australia: 800,000 more than before the (1996) buyback,” the institute said in its May report. “Australians needs gun laws that live up to the Howard Government’s bravery, and right now Australia does not have them.”
Albanese, along with state and territorial leaders, agreed on Monday to look at ways to bolster gun laws, including by accelerating the launch of the national firearms register called for in the 1996 legislation, making gun licenses available only to Australian citizens, and imposing new restrictions the types of weapons that are legal for licensees to own.
A memorial at sea, and a day of reflection planned for Bondi Beach victims
Hundreds of people plunged into the ocean at Bondi Beach on Friday to honor the 15 people killed in the terror attack, forming a massive ring in the sea on surf and paddle boards, as Albanese announced a national day of reflection to be observed on Sunday.
Albanese urged Australians to light candles at 6:47 p.m. on Sunday, “exactly one week since the attack unfolded.”
Surfers and swimmers paddle out into the ocean to hold a tribute for the victims of the terror attack at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 19, 2025.
Steve Markham/AP
On Friday, swimmers and surfers paddled into a circle, bobbing in the gentle morning swell, splashing water and roaring with emotion.
“They slaughtered innocent victims, and today I’m swimming out there and being part of my community again to bring back the light,” security consultant Jason Carr, 53, told AFP. “We’re still burying bodies. But I just felt it was important.”
Carole Schlessinger, a 58-year-old chief executive of a children’s charity, said there was a “beautiful energy” at the ocean gathering. “To be together is such an important way of trying to deal with what’s going on.”
“It was really lovely to be part of it,” she said, adding: “I personally am feeling very numb. I’m feeling super angry. I’m feeling furious.”
Australian police carried out a dramatic operation in a Sydney suburb on Thursday, with heavily armed officers in tactical gear reportedly ramming a car and at least briefly detaining several men amid the ongoing investigation into the Sunday terror attack on a Jewish holiday gathering at the city’s Bondi Beach.
The New South Wales state police force said in a statement that two cars were intercepted by tactical operations officers responding “to information received that a violent act was possibly being planned.”
The operation was conducted in Sydney’s southwest suburb of Liverpool, about a half hour drive away from Bondi Beach. Police said they had “not identified any connection to the current police investigation of the Bondi terror attack.”
Australian news outlets NewsWire and The Australian newspaper said the intercepted men were believed to be heading for Bondi from the city of Melbourne, almost 550 miles away in Victoria state.
No arrests were announced, though photos from the scene showed men sitting on the ground as officers moved around them. Police said seven men were “assisting police with their inquiries.”
Police said there was no threat to the public and the operation had concluded.
Police walk past floral tributes left at the promenade of Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 18, 2025, to honor victims of the terror attack that took place there on December 14.
DAVID GRAY/AFP/Getty
NewsWire quoted an unnamed witness of the operation as saying it was “frightening to see so many police with huge weapons in the area” so soon after the Bondi attack.
While police said there was no immediate link to the Bondi Beach shooting, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said earlier Thursday morning that more raids should be expected in the wake of the terror attack, in which two gunmen killed 15 people attending a celebration marking the first day of Hanukkah.
“In the coming days, the New South Wales Joint Counter Terrorism Team will execute further search warrants to support our investigation. There is a lot of material to be examined, and the AFP continues to work with both domestic and international partners to build a more complete picture of the movements and who the alleged offenders had contact with, both in Australia and offshore,” she said.
MANILA, Dec 17 (Reuters) – There is no evidence indicating that the two suspects involved in the Bondi Beach attack received any form of military training while in the Philippines, the Philippines’ National Security Adviser said on Wednesday.
In a statement, Eduardo Año said that a mere visit to the country does not substantiate allegations of terrorist training, and the duration of their stay would not have permitted any meaningful or structured training.
The alleged father-and-son gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing 15 in an attack that shocked Australia and heightened fears of antisemitism and violent extremism.
Año said the government was investigating the two men’s travel from November 1 to 28 and coordinating with Australian authorities to determine the purpose of the visit, dismissing media reports portraying the southern Philippines as a hotspot for violent extremism as “outdated” and “misleading”.
Immigration records show the pair landed in Manila and travelled to Davao City in Mindanao, a region long-plagued by Islamist militancy, before the attack that Australian police say appeared to have been inspired by Islamic State.
The men stayed mostly in their rooms for almost a month at a budget hotel in Davao, MindaNews reported.
The father and son checked in at noon on November 1 and rarely went out for more than an hour, a hotel staffer told the online news outlet, which is based in Mindanao. Hotel staff said the two kept to themselves, never spoke to other guests, or had visitors. They were only seen walking nearby and never taking rides or getting picked up in front of the hotel.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Calls to a hotel officer and Davao police went unanswered.
Since the 2017 Marawi siege, a five-month battle in which the Islamic State-inspired Maute group seized the southern city and fought government forces, Philippine troops have significantly degraded ISIS-affiliated groups, Año said.
“The remnants of these groups have been fragmented, deprived of leadership, and operationally degraded,” he added.
(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by David Stanway and Sharon Singleton)
The father and son suspects in the terror attack on Jewish people gathered for a Hanukkah event in Bondi Beach, Australia, spent most of November in the Philippines, police said Tuesday. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, meanwhile, that the attack was “motivated by ISIS ideology.”
New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters that investigators were still looking into the reasons for the trip and where exactly the men went between Nov. 1 and 28. The Philippines Bureau of Immigration said Sajid Akram, 50, who was killed during the attack, and his 24-year-old son, identified widely by Australian media as Naveed Akram, had listed the southern city of Davao as their final destination on the trip.
Australian public broadcaster ABC reported the men had undergone “military-style training” in the Asian nation, citing security sources.
Philippines officials denied it. Presidential spokesperson Claire Castro, quoting a National Security Council statement, said “there is no validated report or confirmation that individuals involved in the Bondi Beach incident received any form of training in the Philippines,” according to French news agency AFP.
“People have traveled and networked amongst these groups, but very, very rarely,” Tom Smith, the academic director of the Royal Air Force College who studies security and terrorism in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, told CBS News. “And this is often overblown.”
An Australian flag is placed near flowers laid as a tribute to honor the victims of a terror attack that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025.
Reuters/Flavio Brancaleone
The Philippines’ history with Islamist insurgency
Islamist separatists have operated in the southern Philippines for decades — it’s “an insurgency which is almost 100 years in the making,” according to Smith.
He said two longstanding militant groups in the region — the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, known as the MILF, and the Moro National Liberation Front, or MNLF — have been “sort of the grandfather, old rebellious groups of the Islamist movement” in the region.
But, Smith said, “when you have two rather, sort of beefy militant groups, people get disgruntled. And so there’s loads of other fringe, much smaller militant groups” in the region as well, including one called Abu Sayyaf, which is affiliated with ISIS.
Smith said these groups are “much smaller in number, but probably more vicious in their attacks against civilians and government officials.”
“Analysts now describe Abu Sayyaf as fragmented remnants with residual ideological affinity to Islamic State (ISIS), but little evidence of real operational direction or sustained funding” from ISIS, Lucas Webber, a senior research fellow at the New York-based Soufan Center think tank, told CBS News.
Based in the Philippines’ remote Sulu archipelago, Abu Sayyaf’s main business is kidnapping for ransom, Smith said.
They “wrapped themselves in the ISIS flag, or the al Qaeda banner in years gone by, because they want to inflate their sense of danger. Because, quite frankly, there’s an economic incentive to that. Because it means that they will get a higher ransom paid more efficiently, and these guys don’t play,” he said. “They will actually behead people.”
That is a view shared by the U.S. government, which designated Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization in 1997, not long after it emerged as an offshoot of the larger Islamist groups in the region.
According to the U.S. State Department’s most recent assessment from 2023, it is “one of the most violent terrorist groups in the Philippines.”
“Some Abu Sayyaf Group factions have been reported to interact and coordinate with ISIS-P [ISIS-Philippines], including by participating in attacks that are claimed by ISIS in the Sulu Archipelago,” the U.S. government assessment said, adding that it had “committed bombings, ambushes of security personnel, public beheadings, assassinations, extortion, and kidnappings for ransom.”
But both Smith and Webber told CBS News that Abu Sayyaf, and other regional factions, had been dealt a serious blow in recent years.
“Years of military pressure [with U.S. support], better local governance in Bangsamoro, and amnesty/reintegration programs have broken up many networks, led to mass surrenders, and sharply reduced the frequency and scale of attacks,” Webber said. “At the same time, small pockets of militants and ex‑fighters with IS ideology remain in parts of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, and individuals can still be radicalized online or through personal ties. The main risk today is less a large ‘IS province’ on Philippine soil, and more the possibility that residual cells or sympathizers could attempt sporadic attacks or link up with transnational plots if local conditions deteriorate or security efforts are neglected.”
Terror training camps?
The Associated Press cited Philippine military and police officials on Tuesday as saying there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants operating in the south of the country.
Smith said to travel to receive weapons training with Abu Sayyaf militants would be very difficult for foreigners in the Philippines, especially without any local language skills.
“They would stick out like a sore thumb,” Smith said. “When I go there, you know, I’m there with military support. I have a Ph.D. in the area, and even I stick out like a sore thumb.”
He said there are “plenty of armed people in Mindanao, in the Philippines, for them to go and practice, you know, firing rifles and what have you. But it’s a long way to say that that equals a terrorist camp.”
Referring to the suspects in the Bondi Beach attack, Smith said it was “much more likely that they could have got some ex-rebels and gone somewhere in the jungle for a couple of weeks and been shown how to fire and clean their rifles and stuff like that.”
The two larger militant groups, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front — which are not affiliated with ISIS — do “have the training camps. They’re left alone to their territories. But it would be very unusual if the Bondi Beach attackers got orientated with them, because I just can’t imagine that the MILF or the MNLF would have countenanced that. So it is really unusual,” Smith said.
Football Australia will be able to issue $90 tickets to the Socceroos’ most loyal fans after FIFA agreed to slash the price of some World Cup tickets following a global backlash.
Some fans will even get $US60 ($90) seats for the final instead of being asked to pay $US4,185 ($6,300).
However, they are likely to only equate to around 500 tickets a match that Australia plays.
FIFA said that the cheaper tickets would be made available for every game at the tournament, going to the national federations whose teams are playing. Those federations will decide how to distribute them to fans who have attended previous games at home and on the road.
The cheaper tickets, labelled “Supporter Entry Tier”, will be 10 per cent of the federation’s allocation — which itself will vary depending on stadium size.
Loading…
The “participant member association” allocation is 8 per cent of stadium capacity per country per match.
Australia’s group games are in Vancouver (54,000 capacity), Seattle (69,000) and Santa Clara (71,000), meaning it will respectively receive 432, 552, and 568 $90 tickets for its matches against a UEFA play-off winner (Turkey, Romania, Slovakia or Kosovo), USA and Paraguay.
So will its opponents. The next cheapest tickets are priced at around $400.
FIFA’s climbdown follows meetings between senior officials in Doha this week, where federations are understood to have pushed back at the pricing model.
Fans worldwide reacted with shock and anger last week on seeing FIFA’s ticketing plans that gave participating teams no tickets in the lowest-priced category.
The co-hosts had pledged eight years ago — when they were bidding for the tournament — that hundreds of thousands of $US21 ($32) tickets would be made available.
FIFA has also faced fierce criticism for a ticket pricing strategy that includes dynamic pricing, in which prices can increase due to demand, and acting as its own resale platform, taking a cut in the process.
When the original pricing was announced Football Supporters Association Australia chairman Patrick Clancy said the prices were high but he thought many Socceroos’ fans would still buy them.
“These are historically high prices — even the minimums,” he said.
“I’m sure there will be some people who choose not (to go), and that’s absolutely fine, but I suspect the large majority will not be put off.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that the father and son suspects in the antisemitic terror attack on a Hanukkah gathering on Bondi Beach were inspired by ISIS, as officials in India confirmed that the older man was originally from that nation.
Authorities also revealed that gunmen had recently returned from the Philippines, where they traveled to an area known as a hotbed for terrorist groups.
The mass shooting on the famous beach left 15 innocent people dead, including a 10-year-old girl and an Holocaust survivor. The attack was “motivated by Islamic State ideology,” Albanese said Tuesday as he visited one of the heroes who tried to stop the attackers.
Australia’s federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett also said Tuesday that it was “a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” referring to the now disparate group that, for several years, held a huge swathe of territory spanning the Syria-Iraq border.
The suspects, a father and son aged 50 and 24, used guns that were owned legally by the older man, whom officials in New South Wales state have named as Sajid Akram. He was shot dead at the scene, and his son was still being treated in a hospital on Tuesday, where Australian public broadcaster ABC said he had regained consciousness.
Indian police confirm father was from Hyderabad
Police in the southern Indian state of Telangana confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that Sajid Akram was originally from the city of Hyderabad. In a statement, the police said he earned a degree in Hyderabad before migrating to Australia in November 1998, where he married a woman of European origin.
Sajid Akram held an Indian passport, while his son Naveed and a daughter were both born in Australia and are citizens of the country, the police said, confirming previous statements by Australian officials about the son’s nationality. U.S. officials had told CBS News soon after the attack that at least one of the Akrams was believed to be a Pakistani national, but that appears to have been a case of mistaken identity, and a man with the same name as the younger suspect has come forward in Sydney to say he was wrongly identified.
The Telangana police said the elder Akram had “limited contact with his family in Hyderabad over the past 27 years,” visiting six times since he migrated to Australia, “primarily for family-related reasons.”
The police statement said family members in India had “expressed no knowledge of his radical mindset or activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalization, and that the son’s apparent radicalization appeared “to have no connection with India.”
Australian officials have confirmed that homemade ISIS flags were found — along with an improvised explosive device — in the suspects’ vehicle at Bondi Beach on Sunday, and police provided new information on Tuesday about their recent movements.
Suspected gunmen spent most of November in the Philippines
Both men traveled to the Philippines in November, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters on Tuesday, adding that investigators were still looking into the reasons for the trip and where exactly the men went.
The Philippines Bureau of Immigration said both Sajid Akram and his son, identified widely by Australian media as Naveed Akram, spent most of November — from the 1st until the 28th — in the Philippines, and listing the city of Davao as their final destination.
Muslim separatists, including the Islamist Abu Sayyaf group that once publicly backed ISIS, are active in that part of the southern Philippines. ABC, the Australian public broadcaster, said the men had undergone “military-style training” in the Philippines, citing security sources.
That group and others in the region have drawn and trained some foreign militants from across Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past, according to the Associated Press, though Abu Sayyaf has been weakened in recent years by repeated military offensives.
The AP cited Philippine military and police officials as saying there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants operating in the south of the country.
Did Australian officials fail the Jewish community?
Australian officials confirmed Monday that Naveed Akram was under investigation for about six months during 2019 for suspected links to a Sydney-based terror cell, though the nation’s primary spy agency found he represented no threat, and officials said the probe had focused on associates.
Australia’s ABC network reported that his ties included “longstanding links” to members of a pro-ISIS cell in Australia, including contact with alleged jihadist spiritual leader Wisam Haddad and a man named Youssef Uweinat, who was convicted of recruiting young people in Australia to Islamic extremism.
A lawyer for Haddad has denied that the cleric had “any knowledge of or involvement in the shootings that took place at Bondi Beach,” according to the network.
Many people, from the daughter of one of the victims, to a former Australian leader, have told CBS News the men’s history should have raised serious red flags, if not stopped them before they claimed so many lives.
Israeli officials have harshly criticized Australia’s government for failing to protect Jewish people amid a sharp rise in recent years of antisemitic incidents.
Police set up a cordon at the scene of a mass shooting at Bondi Beach, Dec. 14, 2025 in Sydney, Australia.
George Chan/Getty
“We are now facing here a surge of antisemitism, and Australians of Jewish faith are not feeling secure in their own country, and this is insane,” Israeli Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon told CBS News on Tuesday, urging Australian leaders to create opportunities for young people of different faiths to come together, “and not once a year, but on a weekly basis.”
Maimon also said “boundaries should be set” by Australian authorities, referring to pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been held in the country.
“I believe that it’s very important to make sure that while the principle of freedom of expression should be kept, there should be also a limit to the language that some protesters, and in some protests, we hear,” he said. “I always believe that there is room to do more. Always. I’m asking myself every day, ‘what can I do better? How can I do better?’ And I’m trying to do it. And I do expect the Australian government to do better.”
Former Australian leader says there are no easy answers
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told CBS News on Tuesday that the national government undoubtedly had some very big questions to answer, but he stressed that intelligence gathering — for all nations — is an imperfect science.
“This type of terrorism has been, the elements of that, have been present in Australia for a long time, and our agencies spend a lot of time keeping an eye on them, but it’s hard to track every single person,” said Turnbull, who was Australian prime minister from 2015 to 2018.
“Certainly, it’s a very big question: Why does somebody living in the suburbs of Sydney need six long arms, as he [Sajid Akram] had, even though they were licensed? Second question is, why were they licensed to a man who had a son who had been on an ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organization] watchlist because of links to ISIS-related entities? … And that trip to the Philippines raises another question: Why were they there? And so, you know, this gets back to the problem that I think we face all around the world, is databases talking to each other? Are we actually putting all the dots together in time?”
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks during a news conference in Sydney, Australia, in a July 30, 2017 file photo.
AAP/Sam Mooy/via Reuters
“There are holes in everybody’s intelligence gathering,” Turnbull said. “But as you know, the terrorist only has to be right once. The security agencies have to be right every time.”
Regarding the sharp criticism levelled by many in the Jewish community, in particular, over perceived failings in detecting the threat posed by the suspects, and also in sufficiently protecting the pre-planned Jewish event on Bondi Beach, Turnbull said he wasn’t sure how much more could have been done by his successor Albanese.
“I’ve been prime minister, right? And I’m on the opposite side of politics, so I’m not trying to be partisan about this, but I struggle to see what he could have done that was different. I mean there have been people saying he shouldn’t have allowed pro-Palestine marches. Well, you know, we do have freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in Australia. I mean we have restrictions in Australia on speech, on hate speech, and on guns, in particular.”
“When I ask people, they will say he should have condemned antisemitism more often. Well, I’ve never heard him do anything other than condemn it, but my question really is to say, what would difference would that have made? To those terrorists, you know, they’re not going to listen to a lecture on the evils of antisemitism from you or me or Anthony Albanese.”
“Remember, terrorism is a political act, right? So, you’ve got to try to interrupt people being radicalized, particularly young men, it’s the most vulnerable group, and that involves monitoring what is being said online, what they’re being taught, you know, in schools or in mosques or in other places. And the intelligence agencies are doing that all the time,” he said.
Have you ever in your life encountered a character as wretched as Donald Trump? For many people, this was a question asked and definitively answered twenty years ago, when Trump was still a real-estate vulgarian shilling his brand on Howard Stern’s radio show and agreeing with the host’s assessment that his daughter Ivanka was “a piece of ass” and describing how he could “get away with” going backstage at the Miss Universe pageant to see the contestants naked.
Or, perhaps, his character came clear a decade later, during his first run for the Presidency, when he said of John McCain, who spent more than five years being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” This was from a man who avoided the war with four student deferments and a medical deferment for bone spurs in his heel. Larry Braunstein, a podiatrist in Jamaica, Queens, who provided Trump with this timely diagnosis, in the fall of 1968, rented his office from Fred Trump, Donald’s father. One of the late doctor’s daughters told the Times, “I know it was a favor.”
One day, a historian will win a contract to assemble the collected quotations of the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President—all the press-room rants, the Oval Office put-downs, the 3 A.M. Truth Social fever dreams. The early chapters will include: “Blood coming out of her—wherever.” “Horseface.” “Fat pig.” “Suckers.” “Losers.” “Enemies of the people.” “Pocahontas.” And then the volume will move on to “Piggy.” “Things happen.” And so on.
After a decade of constant presence on the political stage, Trump no longer seems capable of shocking anyone with the brutality of his language or the heedlessness of his behavior. His supporters continue to excuse his insouciant cruelty as “Trump being Trump,” proof of his authenticity. (The antisemitism of Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and a gaggle of group-chatting young Republican leaders is, similarly, included in the “big tent” of MAGA rhetoric.) Now, when a friend begins a conversation with “Did you hear what Trump said today?,” you do your best to dodge the subject. What’s the point? And yet the President really did seem to break through to a new level of degradation this week.
This past weekend brought a terrible and rapid succession of violent events. On Saturday afternoon, in Providence, an unidentified gunman on the Brown University campus shot and killed two students and wounded nine others in the midst of exam period. The killer has yet to be found. On Sunday, in Archer Park, near Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, a father-and-son team, both dressed in black and heavily armed, reportedly took aim at a crowd of Jewish men, women, and children who were celebrating the first night of Hanukkah. At least fifteen people were killed, including an eighty-seven-year-old Holocaust survivor and a ten-year-old girl. The massacre was the latest in a long series of antisemitic incidents in Australia—and beyond.
Finally, on Sunday night, came the news that the actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, had been found dead in their home. Their bodies were discovered by their daughter Romy. Los Angeles police arrested their son, the thirty-two-year-old Nick Reiner. According to press reports, the investigation had focussed on him immediately not only because of his history of drug abuse but also because he had been behaving erratically the night before, in his parents’ presence, at a holiday party at the home of Conan O’Brien. Nick Reiner is being held, without bail, in Los Angeles County jail.
There was something about these three events that came in such rapid succession that it savaged the spirit—the yet-again regularity of American mass shootings, this time in Providence; the stark Jew hatred behind the slaughter in Australia; the sheer sadness of losing such a beloved and decent figure in the popular culture, and his wife, purportedly at the hands of their troubled son. It would be naïve to think that any leader, any clergy, could ease all that pain with a gesture or a speech. Barack Obama speaking and singing “Amazing Grace” from the pulpit in Charleston, South Carolina, or Robert F. Kennedy speaking in Indianapolis on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.—that kind of moral eloquence is somehow beyond our contemporary imaginations and expectations. What you would not expect is for a President of the United States to make matters even worse than they were. But, of course, he did. A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood,” Trump wrote, on Truth Social, on Monday. He went on:
HANUKKAH CELEBRATIONS ARE WELL UNDERWAY. AND TONIGHT A LOCAL CONGREGATION IS MAKING SURE THEY STAND TOGETHER IN THE WAKE OF A DEADLY MASS SHOOTING IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, TARGETING A HANUKKAH EVENT. ORGANIZERS AT THE MONROEVILLE LIGHT OF NIGHT CELEBRATION SAY THEY COORDINATED WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT AHEAD OF THE EVENT, COVERING ALLEGHENY COUNTY IN MONROEVILLE, PITTSBURGH’S ACTION NEWS FOUR REPORTER JORDAN CIOPPA HEARD WHY IT WAS IMPORTANT FOR THE JEWISH COMMUNITY TO KEEP THE TRADITION GOING THIS YEAR, DESPITE THE ANTI-SEMITISM OVERSEAS. IT’S THE SECOND NIGHT OF HANUKKAH, AND TONIGHT, THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN MONROEVILLE WENT ALL OUT WITH A MENORAH MADE OF ICE. PEOPLE. THE CELEBRATION EMPHASIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF SPREADING LIGHT IN A TIME OF DARKNESS. LET US DEDICATE THE LIGHTS OF THESE CANDLES IN THEIR MEMORY, SO THAT WE CAN ONLY INCREASE IN THE LIGHT. THE CONGREGANTS OF CHABAD JEWISH CENTER OF MONROEVILLE CELEBRATED NIGHT TWO OF HANUKKAH WITH THEIR JEWISH BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN AUSTRALIA. ON THEIR MINDS, JUST REALLY HEARTBROKEN. RABBI MENDY SHAPIRO SAYS HE WAS CLASSMATES WITH RABBI ELI SCHLANGER, ONE OF THE 15 PEOPLE KILLED IN AN ATTACK ON HANUKKAH CELEBRATION ON SYDNEY’S BONDI BEACH. SHAPIRO SAYS HE GREW UP WITH SCHLANGER IN NEW YORK AND HAD RECENTLY CONNECTED WITH HIM AT AN EVENT THERE. HE’S JUST A SPECIAL PERSON AND HIS MESSAGE, I KNOW THAT HE HE WAS THERE AT THIS EVENT, SPREADING LIGHT IN THE FACE OF ALL THE DARKNESS THAT’S GOING ON IN THE WORLD, AND THAT THAT’S SOMETHING THAT I KNOW HE’S BEEN TEACHING. SHAPIRO MADE SURE TO DO THE SAME MONDAY NIGHT. BUNDLED UP IN HEAVY COATS, HATS AND GLOVES, THE CROWD DIDN’T LET THE FRIGID TEMPS HINDER THEM FROM CARRYING ON BELOVED HANUKKAH TRADITIONS. WELL, FOR SURE, OF COURSE, WE’RE LETTING THE MENORAH EVERY NIGHT. WE ALWAYS HAVE THE BATTLE IN OUR FAMILY, WHICH IS WHICH WE LIKE BETTER. THE THE LATKES OR THE JELLY DONUTS. SO WE COMPROMISE AND DO BOTH. AND IT TURNS OUT THE COLD WEATHER MADE THE PERFECT ENVIRONMENT FOR THE MENORAH ICE SCULPTURE, WITH THE WEATHER BEING LIKE IT IS RIGHT NOW AND THE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE THAT SHOWED UP, IT’S JUST IT JUST SHOWS THE IDEA OF COMMUNITY AND IT’S JUST A GREAT TIME. TO. THE CELEBRATION WRAPPED UP WITH CHOCOLATE COINS RAINING DOWN ON THE CHILDREN IN WHAT’S CALLED THE GUILT DROP THROUGH SMILES, LAUGHTER AND LIGHT. THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF MONROEVILLE SPREADING A POWERFUL MESSAGE THIS HOLIDAY, AND A WAY TO PUSH AWAY DARKNESS IS NOT TO FIGHT. IT IS TO BRING MORE LIGHT. AND WHEN YOU LIGHT SOME MORE LIGHT, YOU PUSH AWAY THE DARKNESS. ORGANIZERS SAY THEY’RE TAKING PRECAUTIONS FOR HANUKKAH DINNER ON THURSDAY AS WELL, COVERING ALLEGHEN
Rabbi who knew Bondi Beach victim emphasizes importance of celebrating Hanukkah amid tragedy
Members of the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroeville near Pittsburgh celebrated night two of Hanukkah with their Jewish brothers and sisters in Australia on their minds. “Let us dedicate the lights of these candles in their memory so that we can only increase in the light,” Rabbi Mendy Schapiro told the crowd at Monroeville’s 10th annual Light up the Night event on Monday. Schapiro told sister station WTAE that he was classmates with Rabbi Eli Schlanger, one of the 15 people killed in an attack on a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The rabbi said he grew up with Schlanger in New York and had recently connected with him at an event there. “He’s such a special person and his message, I know that he was there at this event spreading light in the face of all of the darkness that’s going on in the world,” Schapiro said. “That’s something that I know that he’s been teaching.”Video above: Sacramento rabbi mourns family friend killed at Bondi BeachSchapiro made sure to do the same on Monday night. Bundled up in heavy coats, hats, and gloves, the crowd didn’t let the frigid temps hinder them from carrying on beloved Hanukkah traditions. “Of course, we’re lighting the menorah every night. We always have the battle in our family, which do we like better, the latkes or the jelly doughnuts? So we compromise and do both,” Michael Edelstein said. It turns out the cold weather made the perfect environment for the event’s menorah ice sculpture. “With the weather being like it is right now and the amount of people that showed up, it just shows the idea of community, and it’s a great time,” said Turtle Creek Mayor Adam Forgie. The celebration wrapped up with chocolate coins raining down on the children in what’s called the “gelt drop.”Through smiles, laughter, and light, the Jewish community of Monroeville spread a powerful message this holiday. “The way to push away darkness is not to fight it; it’s to bring more light. And when you light more light, you push away the darkness,” Schapiro said. Organizers said they coordinated with local law enforcement ahead of Monday’s event and an upcoming Hanukkah dinner on Thursday in the name of safety.
“Let us dedicate the lights of these candles in their memory so that we can only increase in the light,” Rabbi Mendy Schapiro told the crowd at Monroeville’s 10th annual Light up the Night event on Monday.
The rabbi said he grew up with Schlanger in New York and had recently connected with him at an event there.
“He’s such a special person and his message, I know that he was there at this event spreading light in the face of all of the darkness that’s going on in the world,” Schapiro said. “That’s something that I know that he’s been teaching.”
Video above: Sacramento rabbi mourns family friend killed at Bondi Beach
Schapiro made sure to do the same on Monday night. Bundled up in heavy coats, hats, and gloves, the crowd didn’t let the frigid temps hinder them from carrying on beloved Hanukkah traditions.
“Of course, we’re lighting the menorah every night. We always have the battle in our family, which do we like better, the latkes or the jelly doughnuts? So we compromise and do both,” Michael Edelstein said.
It turns out the cold weather made the perfect environment for the event’s menorah ice sculpture.
“With the weather being like it is right now and the amount of people that showed up, it just shows the idea of community, and it’s a great time,” said Turtle Creek Mayor Adam Forgie.
The celebration wrapped up with chocolate coins raining down on the children in what’s called the “gelt drop.”
Through smiles, laughter, and light, the Jewish community of Monroeville spread a powerful message this holiday.
“The way to push away darkness is not to fight it; it’s to bring more light. And when you light more light, you push away the darkness,” Schapiro said.
Organizers said they coordinated with local law enforcement ahead of Monday’s event and an upcoming Hanukkah dinner on Thursday in the name of safety.
SYDNEY, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Government authorities have not done enough to stamp out hatred of Jews in Australia, which has allowed it to fester in the aftermath of October 7, said the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was wounded at the Bondi shootings on Sunday.
Victoria Teplitsky, 53, a retired childcare centre owner, said that the father and son who allegedly went on a 10-minute shooting spree that killed 15 people had been “taught to hate,” which was a bigger factor in the attack than access to guns.
“It’s not the fact that those two people had a gun. It’s the fact that hatred has been allowed to fester against the Jewish minority in Australia,” she told Reuters in an interview.
“We are angry at our government because it comes from the top, and they should have stood up for our community with strength. And they should have squashed the hatred rather than kind of letting it slide,” she said.
“We’ve been ignored. We feel like, are we not Australian enough? Do we not matter to our government?”
The attackers fired upon hundreds of people at a Jewish festival during a roughly 10-minute killing spree, forcing people to flee and take shelter before both were shot by police.
RISING ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS
Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Australia since the war in Gaza erupted after Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in an attack on October 7, 2023. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has since killed over 70,000 people, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
A rise in such incidents in the past sixteen months prompted the head of the nation’s main intelligence agency to declare that antisemitism was his top priority in terms of threat.
“This was not a surprise to the Jewish community. We warned the government of this many, many times over,” Teplitsky said.
“We’ve had synagogues that have been graffitied, graffiti everywhere, and we’ve had synagogues that have been bombed,” she added, referring to a 2024 arson attack in Melbourne in which no one was killed.
Teplitsky’s father Semyon, 86, bled heavily after being shot in the leg, and now is facing several operations as doctors piece bone back together with cement, then remove the cement from the leg, which he still may lose, she said.
“He’s in good spirits, but he’s also very angry. Angry that this happened, that this was allowed to happen in Australia, the country that he took his children to, to be safe, to be away from antisemitism, to be away from Jew hatred.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “did nothing” to curb antisemitism.
Albanese repeated on Tuesday Australia’s support for a two-state solution. Pro-Palestinian protests have been common in Australia since Israel launched its offensive.
At a press briefing on Monday, Albanese read through a list of actions his government had taken, including criminalising hate speech and incitement to violence and a ban on the Nazi salute. He also pledged to extend funding for physical security for Jewish community groups.
(Writing by Melanie Burton; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
The mass shooting in Australia on Sunday has prompted Los Angeles law enforcement to intensify protection of local Hanukkah celebrations.
“The Los Angeles Police Department is deeply saddened by the tragic mass shooting attack that occurred during a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia,” it shared in a statement on Sunday. “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Australia and here in Los Angeles, and our thoughts are with the victims, their families and all those impacted by this senseless act of violence.”
The Dec. 14 massacre left 15 people dead and dozens injured. People had gathered that afternoon for a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach when suspected father and son gunmen, 24-year-old Naveed Akram, who is in custody, and 50-year-old Sajib Akram, who was shot and killed by officers, attacked.
At the time of posting, the LAPD noted there was no known threat to Los Angeles but assured its commitment to “protecting our diverse communities. As part of this commitment, the LAPD will provide extra patrols at Jewish facilities, schools, synagogues and at Hanukkah events throughout the city” and that it “will continue to work closely with our local, national and international partners” to monitor developments and ensure the safety of our city. Together, we can honor the spirit of Hanukkah by standing united against hate and violence.”
Hanukkah runs from Dec. 14 to 22.
Similarly, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department shared its plans to closely monitor and increase patrols of Jewish community spaces and Hanukkah gatherings. “If you see something, say something,” the LASD said in a statement.
Gunmen killed at least 15 people Sunday during Australia’s Bondi Beach Jewish community Hanukkah celebration. Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, joins CBS News with his reaction to the shooting.
More than 1,000 people had gathered on Bondi Beach on a warm day to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah in Australia. In stark contrast to the joyful energy on the beach, a terror plot was underway, allegedly planned in advance by a father and son who opened fire with rifles into the crowd, with an improvised explosive device at the ready in their car.
“This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Sunday’s mass shooting “a targeted attack on Jewish Australians.” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said it was “designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community.”
Police should have been on high alert, given that it was a Hanukkah celebration and antisemitic threats and attacks have skyrocketed in Australia in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
Yet the two assailants were allegedly able to fire shots toward the beach for more than five minutes, according to eyewitness accounts. Videos show the gunmen taking their time to aim, shoot and then duck from a bridge near the beach. One video shows a good Samaritan jumping on the back of one of the shooters and wrestling his gun away. Local media reported that the man who intervened, identified as 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed, suffered two gunshot wounds.
“The first initial reaction wasn’t even by police, it was by civilians, which raised a lot of questions about the role of police,” said Oded Ailam, who worked in Israeli intelligence for two decades and reviewed videos of the attack for CBS News.
Asked about police response time at a news conference Monday local time, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said, “I respect a person having an opinion, but I’ve been really clear: Our police responded promptly. Our police respond very promptly. We work closely with the Jewish community. We are very attuned with providing support to the Jewish community.”
Ailam told CBS News, “Everything points to this being a preplanned attack that was planned for a significant amount of time. The big question now is if Iran and Hezbollah will be implicated.”
Australia earlier this year determined a series of previous arson attacks targeting a synagogue and a Kosher food provider had been directed by Iran, and moved to cut diplomatic ties over the incidents.
“As a matter of principle, Iran condemns the violent attack against civilians in Sydney, Australia,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Sunday on social media. “Terror violence and mass killing shall be condemned, wherever they’re committed, as unlawful and criminal.”
When asked by reporters about whether Sunday’s shooting was an intelligence failure, New South Wales officials waved off the questions and said their priority is keeping the community safe.
The alleged assailants were a father and son duo originally from Pakistan, CBS News has learned. They had six firearms — purchased legally — and had assembled an improvised explosive device to target the Jewish gathering, according to authorities.
While shocking, the attack is not entirely surprising to people who track antisemitic attacks.
In one particularly notable incident last year, masked assailants conducted an arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne. Another arson attack was carried out at the kosher food provider Lewis Continental Kitchen in Sydney, also last year.
Both attacks were determined by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to be tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. In August, Prime Minister Albanese expelled Iran’s ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, and three other Iranian diplomats, citing the intelligence assessment concluding that Iran directed antisemitic arson attacks on Australian soil.
The ECAJ found antisemitic incidents in Australia remain at historically high levels — almost five times the average annual number before Oct. 7, 2023, which is the largest spike of any J7 country between 2021 and 2024. J7 refers to the seven countries with the largest Jewish communities outside Israel that form the J7 Task Force Against Antisemitism: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Argentina and Australia.
The J7 Task Force met in Sydney less than one week before Sunday’s attack to discuss the growing security threat to the Jewish community in Australia.
“This attack is not only the latest in a disturbing series of antisemitic incidents in Australia but also around the globe, including in the United States,” said Oren Segal, senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence at the Anti-Defamation League. “And these incidents are becoming increasingly violent.”
On Sunday, two gunmen killed at least fifteen people at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, in an attack that targeted the country’s Jewish community as it began its celebration of Hanukkah. At least forty more were wounded. The gunmen were father and son; the younger man is in custody and in critical condition, and the older man was killed. The gathering at Bondi Beach had been organized by Chabad, a branch of Orthodox Judaism that holds cultural and religious events around the world. Australia, like a number of countries, has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years, particularly since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, and the ensuing war in Gaza.
I spoke by phone on Sunday with Michael Visontay, the commissioning editor of the Jewish Independent, which is based in Australia, and the author of the book “Noble Fragments.” Our conversation about the attack, the history of the Australian Jewish community, and the rise of antisemitism in Australia, is below.
I read this morning that Australia had a higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any other country except Israel. What can you tell us about the Jewish community in Australia?
That’s absolutely true, and it is central to the identity and the ethos of the Jewish community in Australia, because it means that, as the generations have gone on, the sensibility and the sensitivity within the community to the threats of antisemitism, of prejudice, and of the echoes of the Holocaust from the Second World War, are much more pronounced here than they are virtually anywhere else. In America, there is a much more diverse array of Jews and of affiliations—there’s a large contingent of Reform Jews, and Jews of all sorts of different backgrounds. Whereas, in Australia, we are largely Holocaust-survivor stock, my own family included, and that has shaped our cultural and religious antennas very, very strongly.
Melbourne has the biggest community, bigger than in Sydney. Melbourne’s Jewish community is largely Polish, and more insular and inward-looking than the Sydney population, which has a lot more Hungarian Jews, which is my own background. The Hungarian Jewish community was—I don’t know if “integrated” is the right word, but slightly more secular or outward-looking. There are parts of Melbourne where you could think you were in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There’s lots and lots of ultra-Orthodox Jews down in Melbourne.
You said that many Australian Jews come from families that survived the Holocaust, and that that has had a profound effect on the Jewish community there. Can you talk more about that?
Well, there are not necessarily pronounced religious components, and I am not sure you would call the community conservative, but certainly it is much more responsive to changes in society. The community-leadership groups are very outspoken, pressing for more legal and regulatory responses to racial vilification and religious vilification. And there’s been a history of even low-level incidents of antisemitism getting very strong responses from the Jewish community. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a very strong underlying ethos that we’ve always got to be very, very vigilant about antisemitism. Personally, I felt, as I was growing up in Australia, that this was perhaps being overstated and a bit of crying wolf. But after October 7th I felt that I was mistaken and proved wrong.
I read that antisemitic incidents in Australia were already starting to tick up in the years prior to October 7th, but that they got much worse after October 7th. Is that accurate?
Yeah. So, after October 7th, there was an eruption, really, of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli sentiment and behavior. It was both low-level and individual, but also expressed at sort of societal levels, with marches by pro-Palestinian groups into Jewish suburbs, and an indifference to Jewish solidarity with what had happened to Israel. There were a couple of particular incidents that I think really made a difference to people here. The first was on October 9th, after the New South Wales government lit up the Sydney Opera House with the colors of the Israeli flag, in solidarity—there was a pro-Palestinian march that took place, which ended up going to the opera house. Some of them seemed to shout, “Gas the Jews,” which was then subject to a police investigation to corroborate whether they actually said it. According to expert analysis, some people actually said, “Where’s the Jews?,” which, in a sense, was even worse. I’ve never heard that expression. Anyway, that sent a message of hostility, and made people feel that they were a target.
And there were other incidents, too. There was just this great outpouring of hostility, which was felt very strongly by the community. And then there were all sorts of incidents that became higher profile, particularly in the past six to twelve months, with firebombings of synagogues, attacks on Jewish property, and so on. And some of those were shown to have been sponsored by Iran. [The Australian government claimed that Iran was behind attacks, last year, on a kosher deli and on a synagogue. Iran denied the accusation, and Australia expelled the Iranian Ambassador.] A climate of fear and anxiety had been sown by all of these incidents.
I’ve read some of your past work, and I know you’re someone who believes that criticism of Israel, which you have lodged yourself, is not in itself antisemitic, even if sometimes criticism of Israel does take an antisemitic form. And I know the Israeli government has said that the Australian government’s recognition of a Palestinian state is part of what caused these incidents. What did you make of the Israeli government’s criticism?
Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks were just sort of a predictable lash-out, trying to, I guess, denigrate the Australian government because it had recognized Palestinian statehood. And my personal view is that the Australian government had done that as a result of the reports of starvation in Gaza earlier this year, and a number of other countries were doing the same at the time. I think the recognition was probably premature and not necessarily helpful, but I think that was the reason it occurred when it did. That is what triggered Netanyahu to lash out at the Australian government and accuse it of fostering antisemitism—a connection that was tenuous at best.
In terms of criticizing the Israeli government, there’s still a place for it, and it needs to be done when it is appropriate, but it has become very difficult for people, certainly for Jewish people, to receive and digest legitimate criticism on its merit, because there’s been so much toxic bile levelled at Jews and Israelis. It’s become almost impossible to separate the arguments of legitimate criticism from the toxic messaging. And so many Jews have not seen the criticism as legitimate because they’ve got this view of, “Well, they just hate us, and this criticism is indistinguishable from hatred.” That is really one of the biggest casualties of what’s happened. The Israeli government needs to be called out for its bad behavior and policy and the things it says and does, but that criticism needs to be expressed in very precise terms. And, nevertheless, even when that does happen, many people just can’t accept it. And that’s very unfortunate because we need to be able to speak what’s on our minds fairly and precisely and not in a malicious way.
The 50-year-old father was shot and killed by police, and the 24-year-old son is hospitalized, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said at a news conference. At an earlier press conference, Australian police said they were looking for a potential third suspect, but Lanyon later confirmed that was no longer the case.
“I can say that we are not looking for a further offender,” he said.
The 24-year-old alleged assailant was identified as Naveed Akram, a Pakistani national, according to U.S. intelligence officials briefed on the investigation. CBS News has also reviewed Akram’s New South Wales driver’s license.
The name of the father has not been released, but authorities said Sunday they have identified him as a licensed gun owner.
Lanyon said investigators recovered six of the suspect’s licensed firearms at the scene. He added that the older suspect has had a gun licence for about ten years. Improvised explosive devices were also found in one of the suspects’ vehicles, police said.
“We will look at the motives behind this attack and I think it is important as part of the investigation,” Lanyon said.
More than 1,000 people were gathered at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the gunmen were “deliberately targeting the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah.”
The attack at the popular beach left at least 40 people injured, including two officers and three children, Australian officials said.
Also among the injured is 43-year-old fruit seller Ahmed al Ahmed, who had been shot after he confronted one of the gunmen and wrestled the weapon away, Agence France-Presse reported.
One video posted to social media shows al Ahmed jump out from behind a parked car along Campbell Parade, a main street that runs parallel to Bondi Beach, tackle one of the suspects who had just fired his gun, and wrestle the weapon away.
President Trump, during an event at the White House on Sunday, said al Ahmed’s actions “saved a lot of lives.”
Anna Schecter, Emily Mae Czachor, Archie Clarke and Sam Vinograd contributed to this report.
