At least 11 people were killed on Sunday and more were injured after two gunmen opened fire at a crowd celebrating the first day of the Hanukkah holiday on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. One of the shooters was also killed, the police said.
Officials said that at least 11 other people were injured, two of whom were police officers. The police said that the situation had been “neutralized,” and that the second shooter had also been wounded. They added that the number of casualties was expected to change as they continued to investigate the shooting.
The police and the country’s leaders called the shootings a targeted attack on Jewish Australians. Law enforcement officials called the shooting a terrorist attack.
Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said that the police had found what they believed to be several improvised explosives devices in a nearby vehicle that is linked to the suspect who was killed. The suspects’ names have not been released yet.
One witness video shows dozens of people running out of the water and away from the beach as gunshots rang out. Another shows two gunmen in black shirts firing multiple shots from a bridge at a Bondi Beach parking lot.
Here is what we know so far about the shooting:
Hundreds had gathered to mark the Jewish holiday.
The mass shooting happened around 6:45 p.m. at Bondi Beach, one of Sydney’s most popular tourist destinations that stretches over 3,000 feet long and draws hundreds of thousands of people each year.
An event hosted by the Chabad organization was taking place at the beach to celebrate the first day of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah when the gunmen opened fire.
“An attack on Jewish Australians is an attack on every Australian,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a televised address.
The shooting “deeply that pains us as a community,” said Robert Gregory, the chief executive of the Australian Jewish Association.
Witnesses said they heard many gunshots.
Ebonny Munro was at the beach with her 17-month-old baby when she heard gunshots. She dived under a metal barbecue with another man. She said she heard bullets ricocheting off the barbecue and smelled gunpowder from above.
She said the shooting lasted around 10 minutes and witnessed at least one person being shot. “I was about to leave, and I just heard this pop,” Ms. Munro said.
Finn Foster, 18, a backpacker from Canada, said he and his girlfriend had been headed to McDonald’s to get ice cream when they heard what sounded like fireworks.
“Pow, pow, pow,” he said. “Like 15 or 20.”
Mass shootings are rare in Australia.
Mass shootings are rare in Australia because of the country’s strict gun laws. The nation has one of the lowest gun-related death rates in the developed world.
The country overhauled its gun laws after a massacre in 1996, when 35 people were killed by a single gunman in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur. Following the shooting, public anger prompted the government to ban assault rifles and many other semiautomatic rifles and shotguns.
It also imposed new registration requirements and imposed gun buybacks that removed up to a third of privately held guns from circulation and melted down up to a million guns.
Jin Yu Young is a reporter and researcher for The Times, based in Seoul, covering South Korea and international breaking news.
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