SYDNEY — At least 11 people were killed and 28 others injured after two men opened fire Sunday at Australia’s Bondi Beach, in what officials say was a terror incident that targeted the city’s Jewish community.
The attack unfolded around 6:45 p.m. during an event marking the first day of Hanukkah at Archer Park, a grassy area near the beach, authorities said.
One of the gunmen was killed, and another suspected shooter was critically injured, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said during a news conference Sunday evening. Two police officers were among the injured, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said. Officials are investigating the possibility of a third gunman, Lanyon said.
Police said earlier that a “number of suspicious items located in the vicinity” were also being examined.
Chabad of Bondi, the organization that was hosting the event on the beach, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The group’s building was guarded by private security.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the shooting was “beyond comprehension.”
In a news conference, he called the shooting “an act of evil antisemitism, terrorism, that has struck the heart of our nation.”
It occurred on what should have been a “day of joy, a celebration of faith,” Albanese said.
What would typically be a busy early summer evening, with drum circles on the sand, was instead bathed in police and ambulance lights and sirens.
Arthur Arnold, 26, was at his apartment nearby around 7 p.m. when he said he heard gunshots “left and right.”
“I thought it was a car backfiring,” said Arnold, a Canadian in Australia on a work holiday visa. He ran outside and saw scores of people running in all directions.
Mass shootings are rare in Australia, and Sunday’s attack is the deadliest since 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people near Port Arthur, Tasmania, using a legally purchased Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
That attack — the country’s deadliest massacre of the 20th century — prompted the government to buy back firearms and strengthen gun-control laws. Within a year, the government bought back 650,000 firearms.
Australia’s move to restrict the ownership of automatic and semiautomatic rifles and shotguns has become a frequent point of reference for other countries responding to mass shootings and amid the long debate over how the United States could tackle mass shootings.
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