SYDNEY (AP) — Two gunmen shot dead at least 11 people on Sunday during a Jewish holiday celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Australian authorities said, declaring it a terrorist attack. One gunman was fatally shot by police and the second arrested.
Two gunmen shot dead at least 11 people on Sunday during a Jewish holiday celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Australian authorities said, declaring it a terrorist attack. One gunman was fatally shot by police and the second arrested.
The suspect was in critical condition, authorities said. At least 29 people were confirmed wounded, including two police officers, said Mal Lanyon, the police commissioner for New South Wales state, where Sydney is located.
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The massacre followed a wave of antisemitic attacks that have roiled Australia over the past year, although the authorities didn’t suggest those episodes and Sunday’s mass shooting were connected. They said one of the gunmen was known to the security services.
“This attack was designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community,” the state’s Premier Chris Minns said. The massacre was declared a terrorist attack due to the event targeted and weapons used, Lanyon said.
Hundreds had gathered for the gathering at Bondi Beach called Chanukah by the Sea, which was celebrating the start of the Hanukkah Jewish festival.
Chabad identified one of the dead as Rabbi Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and a key organizer of the event, who has worked in the Bondi area for more than 18 years.
Chabad is an Orthodox Jewish movement that is known for its outreach to non-religious Jews. It runs scores of centers around the world that are popular with Jewish travelers and often sponsors large public events during major Jewish holidays.
Dramatic footage apparently filmed by a member of the public and broadcast on Australian television channels showed someone appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen, before pointing the man’s weapon at him.
Lanyon said the death toll was “fluid” and that wounded people were still arriving at hospitals.
Lachlan Moran, 32, from Melbourne, was waiting for his family nearby when he heard shots, he told The Associated Press. He dropped the beer he was carrying for his brother and ran.
“You heard a few pops, and I freaked out and ran away. . I started sprinting. I just had that intuition. I sprinted as quickly as I could », Moran said. He said he heard shooting off and on for about five minutes.
“Everyone just dropped all their possessions and everything and were running and people were crying and it was just horrible », Moran said.
Grace, 30, from Melbourne, who declined to give her last name, and her partner Joel Sargent, 30, told the AP they were in their hotel room when they heard a banging sound and looked out of their window to see people running down the street, hiding behind trees and cars.
“People were screaming, and the gun sounded so loud », Grace said. « It was constant; it would have been over 50 (shots), easily.”
Police said their operation was “ongoing » and that a “number of suspicious items located in the vicinity” were being examined by specialist officers, including an improvised explosive device found in one of the suspect’s cars. Emergency services were called to Campbell Parade about 6.45 p.m. responding to reports of shots being fired.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in Canberra that he was “devastated” by the massacre.
“This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah, which should be a day of joy, a celebration of faith, an act of evil, antisemitism, terrorism that has struck the heart of our nation,” Albanese said. “There is no place for this hate, violence and terrorism in our nation.”
Albanese said the authorities were working to identify everyone involved in the attack.
“Let me be clear we will eradicate it amidst this vile act of violence and hate will emerge a moment of national unity where Australians across the board will embrace their fellow Australians of Jewish faith,” he said. “The evil that was unleashed at Bondi Beach today is beyond comprehension, and the trauma and loss that families are dealing with tonight is beyond anyone’s worst nightmare.”
Australia, a country of 28 million people, is home to about 117,000 Jews, according to official figures. Antisemitic incidents including assaults, vandalism, threats and intimidation surged more than threefold in the country during the year after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal reported in July.
Throughout last summer, the country was rocked by spate of antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne. Synagogues and cars were torched, businesses and homes have been graffitied and Jews were attacked in those cities, where 85% of the nation’s Jewish population live.
Albanese in August blamed Iran for two of the attacks and cut diplomatic ties to Tehran. The authorities didn’t make such claims about Sunday’s massacre.
Meanwhile, Israel urged Australia’s government to address crimes targeting Jews.
“The heart of the entire nation of Israel misses a beat at this very moment,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. “We repeat our alerts time and time again to the Australian government to seek action and fight against the enormous wave of antisemitism which is plaguing Australian society.”
Mass shooting deaths in Australia are extremely rare. A 1996 massacre in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, where a lone gunman killed 35 people, prompted the government to drastically tighten gun laws and made it much more difficult for Australians to acquire firearms.
Significant mass shootings this century included two murder-suicides with death tolls of five people in 2014, and seven in 2018, in which gunmen killed their own families and themselves.
In 2022, two police officers were shot and killed by Christian extremists at a rural property in Queensland state. The three shooters in that incident, conspiracy theorists who hated the police, were also shot and killed by officers after a six-hour siege in the region of Wieambilla, along with one of their neighbors.
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McGuirk reported from Melbourne, Australia, and Graham-McLay from Wellington, New Zealand. Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

Police in Rhode Island have a person of interest in custody after a shooting at Brown University killed two people and wounded nine others. The incident happened Saturday afternoon in a classroom during final exams. Surveillance video shows the suspect, dressed in black, calmly walking away. The .
Police in Rhode Island say they have a person of interest in custody over the shooting at Brown University campus that killed two people and wounded nine others.
They called a news conference for 7 a.m. to provide more details.
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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. Hundreds of police officers were scouring the Brown University campus along with nearby neighborhoods and poring over video in the hunt for a shooter who opened fire in a classroom, killing two people and wounding nine others.
The search stretched late into the night, well after the shooting erupted Saturday afternoon in the engineering building of the Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, during final exams.
Surveillance video released by police shows the suspect, dressed in black, calmly walking away from the scene. His face is not visible and investigators said it wasn’t clear whether the suspect is a student.
The suspect was last seen leaving the engineering building and some witnesses told police the suspect, who could be in his 30s, may have been wearing a camouflage mask, Providence Police Deputy Chief Timothy O’Hara said.
University President Christina Paxson said she was told 10 people who were shot were students. Another person was injured by fragments from the shooting but it was not clear if the victim was a student, she said.
The search for the shooter paralyzed the campus, the nearby neighborhoods filled with stately brick homes and the downtown in Rhode Island’s capital city. Streets normally bustling with activity on weekends were eerily quiet.
Students sheltered in place for hours into the night. Officers in tactical gear led students out of some campus buildings and into a fitness center where they waited. Others arrived at the shelter on buses without jackets or any belongings.
Investigators were not immediately sure how the shooter got inside the first-floor classroom. Outer doors of the building were unlocked but rooms being used for final exams required badge access, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said.
He encouraged people living near the campus to stay inside or not return home until a shelter-in-place order was lifted.
“The Brown community’s heart is breaking and Providence’s heart is breaking along with it,” Smiley said.
Authorities believe the shooter used a handgun, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Democratic Gov. Dan McKee vowed that all resources were being deployed to catch the suspect. Rhode Island has some of the strictest gun laws in the U.S.
Nine people with gunshot wounds were taken to Rhode Island Hospital, where one was in critical condition. Six required intensive care but were not getting worse and two were stable, hospital spokesperson Kelly Brennan said.
Engineering design exams were underway when the shooting occurred in the Barus & Holley building, a seven-story complex that houses the School of Engineering and physics department. The building includes more than 100 laboratories, dozens of classrooms and offices, according to the university’s website.
Emma Ferraro, a chemical engineering student, was in the building’s lobby working on a final project when she heard loud pops coming from the east side. Once she realized they were gunshots, she darted for the door and ran to a nearby building where she sheltered for several hours.
Eva Erickson, a doctoral candidate who was the runner-up earlier this year on the CBS reality competition show “Survivor,” said she left her lab in the engineering building 15 minutes before shots rang out.
The engineering and thermal science student shared candid moments on “Survivor” as the show’s first openly autistic contestant. She was locked down in the campus gym following the shooting and shared on social media that the only other member of her lab who was present was safely evacuated.
Brown senior biochemistry student Alex Bruce was working on a final research project in his dorm directly across the street from the building when he heard sirens outside.
“I’m just in here shaking,” he said, watching through the window as armed officers surrounded his dorm.
Students in a nearby lab turned off the lights and hid under desks after receiving an alert about the shooting, said Chiangheng Chien, a doctoral student in engineering who was about a block away from the scene.
Mari Camara, 20, a junior from New York City, was coming out of the library and rushed inside a taqueria to seek shelter. She spent more than three hours there, texting friends while police searched the campus.
“Everyone is the same as me, shocked and terrified that something like this happened,” she said.
Brown, the seventh oldest higher education institution in the U.S., is one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges with roughly 7,300 undergraduates and more than 3,000 graduate students. Tuition, housing and other fees run to nearly $100,000 per year, according to the university.
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Associated Press journalists Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Seung Min Kim in Washington, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City, Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, Martha Bellisle in Seattle and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.