Two gunmen shot dead at least 16 people on Sunday (December 14, 2025) at a Jewish event being held at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Australian authorities said, declaring it a “terrorist attack”. One alleged gunman was fatally shot by police and the second arrested.
At least 16 people are dead and 38 others injured in a terrorist attack authorities say was designed to target the Jewish community.
New South Wales Health Minister Ryan Park said the death toll had risen from 12 to 16 overnight, including a 12-year-old child.
Three other children are being treated in hospital, he said.
The suspect was in critical condition, authorities said. A massive emergency response was underway, with injured people loaded into ambulances.
“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, said Mal Lanyon, the police commissioner for New South Wales state, where Sydney is located.
Ambulances move around at Bondi Beach after a reported shooting in Sydney on December 14, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
AP
Hundreds had gathered for an event at Bondi Beach called Chanukah by the Sea, which was celebrating the start of the Hanukkah Jewish festival.
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.
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.
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“Everyone just dropped all their possessions and everything and were running and people were crying and it was just horrible,” Moran said.
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.
Local news outlets spoke to distressed and bloody bystanders. Mr. Lanyon said the death toll from the shooting was “fluid” and that injured people were still arriving at hospitals.
“Our heart bleeds for Australia’s Jewish community tonight,” Minns told reporters in Sydney. “I can only imagine the pain that they’re feeling right now to see their loved ones killed as they celebrate this ancient holiday.”
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 responders are on the ground working to save lives.”
Emergency workers transport a person on a stretcher after a reported shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 14, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
AP
“A number of suspicious items located in the vicinity are being examined by specialist officers and an exclusion zone is in place,” police said in a statement.
An annual “Chanukah by the Sea” gathering marking the Jewish festival of Hanukkah was planned at the beach on Sunday afternoon (December 14), but officials have not commented on a possible antisemitic link.
‘Blood everywhere’
Israeli President Isaac Herzog condemned it, however, as a “cruel attack on Jews” and urged the Australian authorities to step up the fight against antisemitism.
An aerial view of emergency personnel working at the scene of a shooting incident at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia on December 14, 2025, in this screen grab from a video. Photo: Nine Network/Seven Network/Australian Broadcasting Corporation via Reuters
One witness who declined to be named said he personally witnessed six dead or injured bodies lying on the beach.
The grassy hill overlooking Bondi Beach was strewn with discarded items from people fleeing too fast to pack up, including an abandoned children’s stroller, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
Paramedics tended to multiple people lying on the grass by the beach, images broadcast by public broadcaster ABC showed.
A weapon that appeared to be a pump action shot-gun was lying by a tree by the beach.
Shocking and distressing: PM
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the shooting Sunday at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was “shocking and distressing”.
“Police and emergency responders are on the ground working to save lives. My thoughts are with every person affected,” Mr. Albanese said in a statement shared by his office.
“I urge people in the vicinity to follow information from the [New South Wales] Police,” he said.
Witness sees ‘two shooters in black’
A British tourist told AFP he saw “two shooters in black” after the gunfire broke out.
“There was a shooting, two shooters in black with semi-automatic rifles,” Timothy Brant-Coles told AFP, saying he saw multiple people who had been shot and wounded.
Another witness, 30-year-old local resident Harry Wilson, told the Sydney Morning Herald he saw “at least 10 people on the ground and blood everywhere”.
Bondi Beach in eastern Sydney is Australia’s most famous beach, drawing huge numbers of surfers, swimmers and tourists especially at weekends.
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.
With inputs from AFP, AP
Published – December 14, 2025 02:35 pm IST
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