'10 minutes of just bang, bang, bang': Witnesses describe panic as gunmen open fire at Bondi Beach

SYDNEY: What was supposed to be a day of celebration at Australia’s Bondi Beach ended with horrific scenes on Sunday (Dec 14) when two gunmen opened fire at a gathering for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

More than 1,000 people had gathered for an event called Chanukah by the Sea.

As gunfire erupted, crowds fled in fear.

“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," said Lachlan Moran from Melbourne.

The 32-year-old was waiting for his family nearby when the incident happened. He told The Associated Press that he dropped the beer he was carrying for his brother and ran.

“Everyone just dropped all their possessions and everything and were running and people were crying and it was just horrible," Moran said.

Witnesses said the shooting at the famed beach on a hot summer's evening lasted about 10 minutes.

"We heard the shots. It was shocking, it felt like 10 minutes of just bang, bang, bang. It seemed like a powerful weapon," Camilo Diaz, a 25-year-old student from Chile, told AFP at the scene.

Gunmen killed 11 people.

One of the dead was Rabbi Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and a key organiser of the event, who has worked in the Bondi area for more than 18 years.

Chabad is an Orthodox Jewish movement that is known for its outreach to non-religious Jews. It runs scores of centres around the world that are popular with Jewish travellers and often sponsors large public events during major Jewish holidays.

One witness who declined to be named said he saw six dead or wounded people lying on the beach.

The grassy hill overlooking Bondi Beach was strewn with discarded items from people fleeing before they could pack up.

Grace, from Melbourne, who declined to give her last name, and her partner Joel Sargent told the AP they were in their hotel room when they heard a banging sound. They looked out of their window to see people running down the street, hiding behind trees and cars.

“People were screaming, and the gun sounded so loud," Grace, 30, said. "It was constant; it would have been over 50 (shots), easily.”

"I was just getting ready to go home, and, like, I was packing my bag, got my flip-flops, was ready to catch my bus, and then I started hearing the shots," said Bondi Junction resident Marcos Carvalho, 38.

"We all panicked and started running as well. So we left everything behind, like flip-flops, everything. We just ran through the hill," he said. "I must have heard, I don't know, maybe, like, 40, 50 shots."

ONE GUNMAN DEAD

Videos circulating on X appeared to show people on the beach and nearby park scattering as multiple gunshots and police sirens could be heard.

One video showed a man dressed in a black shirt firing a large weapon before being tackled by a man in a white T-shirt who wrestled the weapon off him. Another man was seen firing a weapon from a pedestrian bridge.
 

Emergency services were called to Campbell Parade about 6.45pm local time (3.45pm Singapore time).

One suspected gunman was killed and another was in a critical condition, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told a press conference.

At least 29 people injured, including two police officers.

Police were investigating whether a third gunman was involved in the shooting, and a bomb-disposal unit was working on several suspected improvised explosive devices, Lanyon said.

Mike Burgess, a top Australian intelligence official, said one of the suspected attackers was known to authorities but had not been deemed an immediate threat.

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.

The attack came almost exactly 11 years after a lone gunman took 18 people hostage at the Lindt Cafe in Sydney. Two hostages and the gunman were killed after a 16-hour standoff.

Mass shootings are rare in Australia, one of the world's safest countries. Sunday's attack was the worst such incident in the country since 1996, when a gunman killed 35 people at a tourist site in the southern state of Tasmania.