At least 11 dead in a shooting attack against the Jewish community during the Hanukkah celebration on the country’s most famous beach

The suspect was in critical condition, authorities said. There was a huge emergency operation underway, with injured people being loaded into ambulances. Additionally, police were working to defuse an explosive device they found in the car of one of the shooters.

“At 9:36 p.m. tonight I formally declared this fact as a terrorist incident“said Mal Lanyon, the police commissioner of the state of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, in a press conference. He explained that special powers were activated to ensure that “there is no additional threat to the community.”

At least 29 people were injuredLanyon said. Two of them were police officers.

“This attack was designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community,” said the state’s premier, Chris Minns. The massacre was declared a terrorist attack due to 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 for his family nearby 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 that intuition. I ran as fast as I could,” he said. He said he heard intermittent gunshots for about five minutes.

🚨At least 7 have been shot at near Bondi beach Park, Australia. NSW police responded quickly, taking two into custody-one reportedly shot dead by officers + the other detained.

📽️1: The shootout
📽️2: The 2 shooters
📽️3: Brave civilian disarming a shooter
📷: One of the shooters pic.twitter.com/oJrAYcCpwS

— Saikiran Kannan | 赛基兰坎南 (@saikirankannan) December 14, 2025

“Everyone just dropped all their belongings and everything and ran and people were crying and it was just horrible,” Moran added.

Police said their operation was “ongoing” and that “several suspicious objects located nearby” were being examined by specialist officers, including an improvised explosive device found in the car of one of the suspects. Emergency services were called to Campbell Parade about 6.45pm for reports of shots fired, police said.

Local media spoke with affected and blood-stained bystanders who witnessed what happened. Lanyon said the death toll from the shooting was “variable” and that injured people were still arriving at hospitals.

“Our hearts ache for the Australian Jewish community tonight,” Minns told reporters in Sydney. “I can only imagine the pain they are feeling now seeing their loved ones murdered while celebrating this ancient holiday.”

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement that his thoughts were with all those affected.

“The scenes in Bondi are shocking and distressing,” he said. “Police and emergency services are on scene working to save lives.”

Deaths from mass shootings in Australia are extremely rare. A 1996 massacre in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, where a single gunman killed 35 people, led the government to dramatically tighten gun laws and made it much more difficult for Australians to acquire firearms.

Significant mass shootings this century included two murder-suicides killing five people 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 the state of Queensland. The three shooters in that incident, police-hating conspiracy theorists, were also shot dead by officers after a six-hour siege in the Wieambilla region, along with one of their neighbors.