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Two gunmen who opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney's iconic Bondi Beach, killing 15 people, have been identified as a 50-year-old father and his 24-year-old son, Australian authorities confirmed Monday.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said the older gunman died at the scene, while his son remains hospitalized in critical condition following Sunday evening's attack on the Jewish festival. One of the suspects has been named in local media as Naveed Akram from Bonnyrigg, a suburb in Sydney's southeast, though police have not confirmed which of the two men this refers to.
"The 50-year-old is deceased. The 24-year-old is currently in hospital," Lanyon told reporters. "I can say that we are not looking for a further offender."
Police have raided a home in connection with the suspects, multiple Australian media outlets reported. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, citing an unnamed official, identified Akram as one of the alleged assailants but said it remained unclear whether he was the surviving or deceased gunman.
The shooting occurred during Chanukah by the Sea, an annual public event organized to mark the first evening of Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights. Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and typically involves the lighting of a menorah, with one additional candle lit each night of the celebration.
Hundreds of attendees had gathered at the popular beach destination when the violence erupted around 6:45 p.m. local time Sunday. The attackers opened fire on the crowd, sending beachgoers scrambling for safety across the sand and into nearby streets.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the massacre as a "targeted attack against Jewish Australians" and declared it a terrorist incident. The Chabad movement, an Orthodox Jewish organization that sponsored the event, confirmed that Rabbi Eli Schlanger, an assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and a key organizer of the celebration, was among those killed.
Mass shootings are uncommon in Australia, which implemented some of the world's most stringent firearm regulations following a 1996 massacre in Tasmania. That attack, in which a lone gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur, prompted sweeping reforms that dramatically restricted gun ownership and access across the country.
The Bondi Beach attack represents the first deadly mass shooting in Australia since 2022, when six people, including two police officers, died in a suspected ambush at a rural property in Queensland.
The investigation into Sunday's attack continues, with authorities working to determine any potential connections to broader networks or previous incidents. Police have not yet released information about a possible motive or whether the suspects had prior contact with security services.
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