Twelve people were killed and more than two dozen injured in a shooting by two gunmen at a Jewish holiday event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday.
Australian police have deemed the shooting a terrorist attack and are working to determine whether others were involved.
One suspected gunman was dead and another in critical condition, authorities said. A police officer is also among the dead and another was injured, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon confirmed at a news conference with New South Wales Premier Chris Minns.
One of the world’s most famous beaches, Bondi is typically crowded with locals and tourists.
“If we were targeted deliberately in this way, it’s something of a scale that none of us could have ever fathomed. It’s a horrific thing,” Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told Sky News, adding his media adviser had been wounded in the attack.
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.
