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A knife-wielding man went on a stabbing rampage in a crowded shopping mall in Sydney, Australia on Saturday afternoon. He reportedly stabbed fourteen people, including a baby, and seven people are dead as of this writing. The public, however, need not be concerned, because police are saying the usual things they say after such attacks: he acted alone, there is no ongoing threat, and the attacker’s motive is unclear. But is it, really?
The details of the incident are horrifying. The Daily Mail Australia reported Saturday that “six innocent shoppers, including five women and a man, were stabbed to death before the knifeman was fatally shot by a female senior police officer. Eight others have been rushed to hospital with stab wounds including a nine-month-old baby. The 38-year-old mother of the baby was also stabbed and tragically succumbed to her injuries in hospital on Saturday evening.” The attacker was a “dark-haired, bearded man, wearing a Kangaroos ARL jersey,” who “chased and slashed at shoppers as he went on a wild rampage through Westfield Bondi Junction before he was shot dead by police.”
First images of the man who carried out a terror stabbing rampage in Bondi Sydney today. At least four people are dead and an infant was reported to be among those stabbed pic.twitter.com/X2nN8m84ai— Drew Pavlou ???????????????????????????????? (@DrewPavlou) April 13, 2024
A dark-haired, bearded man, eh? While there are Muslims, and Islamic jihadis, of all races, this telling little detail does open the possibility that the attacker could be a member of a demographic containing a large number of jihadis. Nevertheless, the New York Times reported that Sydney police “said the attacker’s motive was unclear, but there were no immediate indications that it was a hate crime.”
That may be. Still, we have seen this kind of thing many times before, in France, Germany, Britain, and even the United States: a man with a knife starts stabbing people at random in a crowded area, killing or wounding as many as he can before he is neutralized by police.
