NSW health minister says Bondi attack death toll may rise
Penry Buckley
Following the update from NSW Health on the injured patients being treated across nine Sydney hospitals, the NSW minister, Ryan Park, has spoken to 2GB.
Emergency services have said 42 people were taken to hospital after the attack – two people, including one child, died overnight and two people have been discharged.
There are now 38 people being treated in hospital, with seven people in a critical condition, while another four are in a critical but stable condition.
Park says people may need to be prepared for the death toll to rise. 16 people have been confirmed dead, including one of the alleged gunmen.
We’ve got a number of people who are in very, very serious and critical ways, in terms of where they are at the moment, and that’s something that we are preparing for, but we are giving them the very best opportunity to recover.
I’m confident in the skill and dedication of our frontline clinicians and our paramedics who perform miracles at the pre-hospital situation, and now those in the hospital working miracles for them.
Key events
More photos from Bondi beach this morning
Members of the public have been laying down flowers at the Bondi pavilion.
Tom McIlroy
Independent MP Monique Ryan says she stands firmly with Australia’s Jewish community and rejects antisemitism, violence, and all forms of hatred.
Speaking after Sunday’s Bondi shooting, the Kooyong MP thanked police and ambulance crews, as well as nurses and doctors treating the injured.
My deepest condolences are with the families who have lost loved ones, those who have been injured, and all affected by this act of terrorism.
All Australians have to stand together against antisemitism and hatred – always.
Over the coming days, weeks, and months, I will work with leaders and members of the Jewish community, police forces, as well as local, state, and federal governments to ensure the safety of all members of our community.
‘We need to understand what happened, how it happened and how we can never let it happen again,’ Allegra Spender says
Wentworth MP Allegra Spender, whose electorate of Wentworth includes Bondi beach, says her entire community is devastated and in mourning.
She said Sunday was “one of the darkest days in Australian history”.
I spoke to people last night who said they’re taking off their mezuzahs, symbols of the Jewish community, on their front doors. They’re taking them off because they feel afraid.
This is how the community feels, and I think it is up to the entire country – absolutely security and police and government – but up all of us to seek over time to restore the faith of the Jewish community about their safety here.
Spender urged Australians to reach out to their Jewish friends and associates to express support and kindness, noting an attack on Jews was an attack on all Australians and the country’s way of life.
She said the government needed to act as well, and that Anthony Albanese should “urgently respond” to antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s report.
We need to understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can never let it happen again.
Cabinet to meet to discuss Bondi attack
The federal cabinet will meet this morning and discuss the Bondi Beach terror attack.
The prime minister will also attend a meeting of the national security committee (NSC), ahead of a national cabinet meeting where Anthony Albanese and state and territory premiers will meet.
We’ll bring any more information we get from those meetings to you.
Luca Ittimani
Floral tribute grows outside Bondi Pavilion
Mourners have laid a growing spread of flowers in front of Bondi Pavilion, which remains cordoned off under police watch.
Among the first to lay flowers was the prime minister, who briefly visited the beach earlier this morning. Asked how he felt upon seeing the scene, Anthony Albanese said one word: “horrific”. He stood in silence by the pavilion for a minute, and shook hands with police officers.
Passersby have pitched in to clear the mess of items left behind by beachgoers, gathering loose towels, bags and surfboards and leaving them at the edge of the sand near the pavilion, where the Australian and Aboriginal flags were flying at half-mast. One woman carrying a basket of items wiped away tears as she walked up the beach.
At the same time, growing numbers of swimmers and surfers were stopping by the beach.
Businesses along the closed beachside road were reopening.
Time for national unity, Albanese says when asked about Netanyahu criticism
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Anthony Albanese and the Australian government of putting “fuel on the antisemitism fire” after last night’s terror attack.
Albanese was asked about Netanyahu’s comments during the press conference this morning, and said now was a moment for “national unity”.
This is a moment for Australians to come together. That’s precisely what we’ll be doing.
Luca Ittimani
Continuing from last post
Friedman said his own nieces and nephews were at the festival and ran across the street and sheltered in a stranger’s apartment for six hours.
My wife was speaking to her sister, her sister was actually here with her three kids. They had to leave, they had to run for their lives and escape across the road.
On the way to the beach this morning, he stopped to find his daughter’s shoes at nearby Dover Heights, which she had left behind as she fled last night.
Some of the injured and dead were Friedman’s good friends and he was “still waiting” to learn who else may have been injured that he knew.
I haven’t really checked my phone this morning … I want to be here this morning and put on my tallit and tefillin and offer some prayers. Just to be here, but not quite knowing what to do with all these emotions and feelings … People are coming over. Jewish people, regular Australians, coming over and just giving each other hugs and crying on each other’s shoulders.
We’re just grieving and feeling those emotions. But like we’ve always done, we will gather together and we will come back stronger.
Luca Ittimani
Rabbi pays tribute to his friend who was killed: ‘He has five children. His youngest is only a few months old.’
Yossi Friedman, a local rabbi, visited Bondi beach to pray and mourn with other members of the Jewish community.
Wearing kippa and tefillin, Friedman stood by the police cordon near the Bondi beach park where gunmen opened fire on a Jewish community event.
Friedman paid tribute to his friend, Eli Schlanger. Schlanger, a London-born rabbi, was the first victim of Sunday’s shooting to be named.
Friedman said:
He was just full of light, he was just so positive and so obsessed with life and just bringing joy to everyone … We don’t know what to do with ourselves today. He has five children. His youngest is only a few months old.
Luca Ittimani
‘It’s hard to believe this level of gun violence could ever happen,’ David Shoebridge says
David Shoebridge, the Greens senator, has laid flowers at Bondi beach this morning.
Holding back tears, the Sydney local and New South Wales MP said:
This is a horrific attack on the Jewish community and upon our friends and neighbours. It’s hard to believe this level of gun violence could ever happen and to see it directed at a Hanukah event at a time when people are coming together to share joy, and in such a beautiful part of the world, is utterly shattering.
I hope that we can come together as a country, acknowledge those moments of extreme bravery from our emergency services and from ordinary bystanders who did everything they could to save their friends and neighbours and avoid division and hate. That’s the hope for all of us.
Anne Davies
Kellie Sloane: ‘I saw a little boy and his dad cowering under the bridge and I got them into the car.’
The new leader of the NSW opposition, Kellie Sloane, is also the state member for Vaucluse, the seat that covers Bondi beach.
Sloane was at a nearby Hanukah event and then ended up down at Bondi beach last night. She just did a press conference recalling her movements.
I was not far from here at a Hanukah event just down the road. I was on stage about to give a speech, when the crowd dispersed and people started running. They’d heard gunfire.
Then I was told by security I needed to leave. I got bundled into the closest vehicle, which was a local ambulance, a CHS ambulance, which is run by the Jewish community. And when I jumped in that car, the driver had heard that his colleague had been shot, and he just said: put your seatbelt on.
And we just flew down here. We arrived within minutes of the aftermath of the shooting and, not knowing what had happened, we parked underneath that bridge, and I hopped out of the car and saw a little boy, a little boy and his dad, cowering under the bridge. And I got them into the car.
Sloane thanks the man who tackled one of the gunmen and took the gun from him, calling him a “national hero”.
I want to thank the local heroes who turned up and did their very best in dangerous circumstances. I want to thank the heroes from our surf life saving clubs who put their own lives on the line to help save lives.
Sloane also references a previous tragedy – the shooting at Westfield Bondi Junction – saying the Bondi community will “stand together”.
We will not let yesterday’s cowardly, evil attacks tear us apart … what happened here yesterday is a chilling reminder of what happens when we allow hate to spread. When we see hate, we need to call it out, and we cannot let this happen in our communities, the community in the east has seen so much tragedy in the last couple of years.
Terror in Bondi – podcast
My colleague Ben Doherty heard the shots from his home and went to Bondi beach last night in the aftermath of the shooting.
He tells Reged Ahmad and the Full Story crew what happened, and they break down what we’ve learned about the attack since.
Have a listen here:
Luca Ittimani
Local returns to the beach: ‘It’s all very eerie and I’ve never seen Bondi like this’
Josh, a Bondi local, returned to the beach this morning less than 12 hours after he fled the shooting on Sunday.
He lives just minutes from the shore and was walking his dog by the beach last night when the shooting began.
I heard the gunshots and just thought it was fireworks. I’d just seen a crowd of people running and hiding behind cars and jumping over fences, and yeah, just panic in people’s eyes. People running for their lives.
Josh picked up his dog and ran back to his apartment, passing others seeking shelter as he went. One young woman hid in his apartment. After just a few hours of sleep, he felt he had to go on his normal morning walk.
[I felt] a bit apprehensive about coming out again. I just wanted to see. If things like these happen, you can’t sort of stay indoors with your head in under the cover. You have to sort of come out eventually, I suppose. It’s very sad. It’s all very eerie and I’ve never seen Bondi like this. From six o’clock in the morning, usually, people are swimming, running, surfing.
After his walk Josh will go to work, like dozens of others visiting the beach before they have to go on with their day.
I’ve got work. So, I mean, yeah. I don’t know. I’ll see how it goes. Probably won’t do very much, but we’ll see.
In pictures: Anthony Albanese meets police officers and lays flowers at Bondi Pavilion
Alleged gunmen named
Nino Bucci
The alleged Bondi gunmen have been identified as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Naveed, 24, was arrested at the scene, but Sajid, 50, who was first identified by the Sydney Morning Herald, was shot dead by police.
Tony Abbott says Australia must not ‘import hatred from overseas’
Former prime minister Tony Abbott spoke to 2GB earlier about the attack. Abbott is among those who have blamed increased social discohesion following 7 October, including pro-Palestinian marches, for the attack. He says:
It’s a bleak day but we’ve got to learn the right lessons from it. And this is the kind of terrible, terrible thing that happens when we have hate on our streets. And we’ve had hate on our streets from that appalling occasion on 9 October, we’ve seen terrible marches promoting death to the IDF, the extirpation of Israel, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and elsewhere.
I just think we need to learn the right lessons. And obviously there has to be a much greater stress on Australian values, and I think we just have to be much more determined not to import hatred from overseas, because whatever else might be behind this attack, plainly it was the supreme expression of Jew hatred … It must be fiercely cracked down upon by every level of government.
Antisemitism envoy says calling out hate is ‘not enough’
Tom McIlroy
Anthony Albanese’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, says she is seeking an urgent acceleration of her recommendations to the government, released in July.
Segal said the prime minister and the NSW premier, Chris Minns, were right to call out creeping antisemitism in Australia, but better guardrails were needed to stop hate across society.
“I think the government has called out the hate and the prime minister has been out there last night and today calling it out,” she told Guardian Australia.
But calling it out is not enough. We need a whole series of actions that involve the public sector, and government ministers, in education in schools, universities, on social media and among community leaders, community activities. It has got to be a whole society approach.
I think that the government needs to accelerate what it needs to do and I am hoping to meet with the prime minister and members of the government to convey to them an acceleration of the plan.
Segal has likened the scale of the attack to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, and said police and government needed to say more about firearms laws.
The prime minister spoke of Jewish members of the community being embraced. I think that’s wonderful, but we need more than embracing them. We need a whole series of actions to convey to the rest of the community how hateful action is completely unacceptable.
NSW health minister says Bondi attack death toll may rise
Penry Buckley
Following the update from NSW Health on the injured patients being treated across nine Sydney hospitals, the NSW minister, Ryan Park, has spoken to 2GB.
Emergency services have said 42 people were taken to hospital after the attack – two people, including one child, died overnight and two people have been discharged.
There are now 38 people being treated in hospital, with seven people in a critical condition, while another four are in a critical but stable condition.
Park says people may need to be prepared for the death toll to rise. 16 people have been confirmed dead, including one of the alleged gunmen.
We’ve got a number of people who are in very, very serious and critical ways, in terms of where they are at the moment, and that’s something that we are preparing for, but we are giving them the very best opportunity to recover.
I’m confident in the skill and dedication of our frontline clinicians and our paramedics who perform miracles at the pre-hospital situation, and now those in the hospital working miracles for them.
