2025 Bondi Beach shooting

2025 Bondi Beach shooting, mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14, 2025. Two gunmen—identified by Australian authorities as a father and son—targeted a crowd of hundreds at a gathering of Sydney’s Jewish community on the first night of Hanukkah. They killed 15 people and wounded more than 40. It was Australia’s worst mass shooting since the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre and the deadliest terrorist incident in the country’s history.

Roughly a thousand people had gathered at Archer Park, a public green space adjacent to Bondi Beach, for “Chanukah by the Sea,” a celebration sponsored by the local Chabad group. The event promised to “fill Bondi with joy and light,” and it had been going for almost two hours when the attack began at about 6:40 pm. The shooters emerged from a silver hatchback with their weapons and ammunition and moved to position themselves on an elevated pedestrian bridge that overlooked the park. The younger gunman reached the bridge, but a pair of bystanders confronted the older shooter, Sajid Akram, and a struggle ensued. Although one of them managed to wrest a long gun away from Akram, both bystanders were shot and killed, becoming the first victims of the attack.

The shooters carried out the attack with an assortment of weapons. Although Australia has strict gun laws, they are administered at the state or territory level, and the specifics can vary. In New South Wales, it is possible to obtain a gun license for occupational or recreational purposes, as well as for pest control, and there is no cap on the number of weapons that can be owned by a single person. Authorities recovered several weapons from the scene, and bystander videos showed the attackers using a mixture of long guns, including shotguns and rifles. At least one of these was a straight-pull bolt-action rifle. These weapons have become more popular in Australia since the semiautomatic weapons ban following the Port Arthur Massacre, as they have a significantly higher rate of fire than a traditional rotating bolt-action rifle.

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For 8 to 10 minutes, the two gunmen targeted the celebrants at the Hanukkah gathering with a mixture of shotgun and rifle fire. The younger gunman remained on the bridge throughout the attack, and the older one descended into the park while continuing to fire his shotgun. It was at this time that Ahmed al-Ahmed, a local fruit shop owner who had seen the attack unfolding, rushed Sajid Akram and overpowered him. Ahmed wrestled the shotgun away, and Akram was forced to retreat to the bridge, where he was shot and killed by police. The suspected younger gunman, Naveed Akram, was shot and wounded by police, but he was expected to recover. Authorities later recovered two improvised explosive devices from the gunmen’s car, as well as a homemade Islamic State flag.

Those killed ranged in age from 10 to 87; the oldest was Alex Kleytman, a Holocaust survivor who had immigrated to Australia from Ukraine.