{"id":3882,"date":"2025-12-15T17:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=3882"},"modified":"2025-12-15T17:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T17:55:10","slug":"how-bondis-hanukkah-festival-turned-from-joy-to-horror-within-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=3882","title":{"rendered":"How Bondi’s Hanukkah festival turned from joy to horror within minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Johanna Chisholm<\/span>and<\/span><\/p>\n

BBC Verify<\/span><\/p>\n

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How Bondi Beach shooting unfolded minute by minute<\/figcaption><\/p>\n
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It was a night that promised to bring “joy and light” to Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach as crowds of Jewish families gathered at a park to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, also known as the festival of light.<\/p>\n

They were among thousands of other swimmers, surfers and sunbathers who had flocked to Australia’s most famous beach on a scorching summer’s afternoon.<\/p>\n

But not long after the Hanukkah event kicked off at 17:00 local time and the first free donuts were doled out, festive music was drowned out by the sounds of screams and the echo of gunshots.<\/p>\n

It’s unclear exactly when the first shot was fired, but the initial call to police was made at 18:47. In the minutes that followed, two gunmen would kill at least 15 people, and injure dozens more, authorities said.<\/p>\n

A local high school teacher, Chavi, told the BBC she dropped to the ground to protect her baby as “bullets were flying above us”.<\/p>\n

“It was pandemonium and chaos,” another attendee, who identified himself as Barry, said as he described<\/a> watching a throng of people trying to escape the scene that had suddenly devolved into a nightmare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In one video verified by the BBC, upbeat music from the Hanukkah event can still be heard in the background as people crouch down and shots are heard, interspersed between shrieks. <\/p>\n

The eerily jubilant music continues playing while the camera pans over the grass, revealing prostrate bodies completely still, their condition unclear.<\/p>\n

Separate footage shows groups of people lying atop one another on the grass, as one woman tries to cover a young child’s head with her hand.<\/p>\n

Panic soon spread from the park to the sand, where videos show terrified beach goers sprinting away from the gunfire. <\/p>\n

Screams, honking car horns and ambulance sirens fill the air in the next chaotic minutes. Some cars crashed as people desperately tried to get away, witnesses have told the BBC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Eyewitness video shows people fleeing beach as shots are fired<\/figcaption><\/p>\n
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A nearly 11-minute video, verified by the BBC, provides perhaps the clearest timeline of the attack – though it is unclear exactly how far into it the recording started.<\/p>\n

It begins as the two gunmen make their way across Campbell Parade – the long stretch of road, lined with cafes, that curves around the beach – and onto a pedestrian bridge above the park where the Hannukah event was taking place.<\/p>\n

It is from there that two men – named as Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed, 24 – allegedly use the elevated position to carry out the remainder of the attack, using what an expert told the BBC were “two sporting shotguns”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One man, believed to be Naveed Akram, remains on the bridge, while the other makes his way towards the park on foot. Shots continue to echo at one-second intervals in some of the footage, while people can be heard screaming.<\/p>\n

As the older man, believed to be Sajid Akram, begins to move away from the bridge, he starts firing at people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dozens of emergency services flooded Bondi Beach following the shooting<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Just a few minutes later, a passerby – who is seen crouching behind parked cars – catches Sajid off guard and is able to wrestle the firearm off him within a few seconds.<\/p>\n

The gunman stumbles away, and the man, who has been identified as Ahmed al Ahmed<\/a>, points the firearm at him, before laying the weapon down against a tree and putting his hands up to signal to officers that he is not the suspect.<\/p>\n

Ahmed, who was shot twice during the attack, has been hailed as a hero and credited by New South Wales Premier Chris Minns for saving “countless lives” with his brave actions.<\/p>\n

Less than a minute after being disarmed, however, Sajid Akram returns to the bridge and resumes shooting at people with another weapon.<\/p>\n

The shooting stops about two minutes later when it appears both men are hit by police fire.<\/p>\n

About seven-and-a-half minutes into the clip, police arrive at the bridge where they are confronted with a highly charged scene – two men with gunshot wounds – the alleged gunmen – and a crowd of bystanders, some of whom appear to kick the men on the ground.<\/p>\n

Police later confirmed that one of the gunmen, Sajid Akram, was found dead at the scene, while the other was critically wounded and taken to hospital, where he remains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police say both men lived about an hour’s drive from Bondi Beach at a house in Bonnyrigg, a suburb in Sydney’s west.<\/p>\n

Days before the attack, however, they had decamped to a short-term rental in Campsie – about 30 minutes closer to the beach, media reports said. <\/p>\n

Their family home in Bonnyrigg has become one of the main focuses of the police investigation. Officers raided it on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Footage of the raid shows three people coming out of it with their hands up, while heavily armed police officers in tactical gear surrounded the perimeter.<\/p>\n

Those people were arrested, but have since been released without charge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Police search the home in Bonnyrigg on Sunday night<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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It is still unclear if the guns used in the attack were owned by the two men, but Sajid Akram owned six registered firearms and held a recreational gun license. <\/p>\n

His son, Naveed, was examined over his close ties to a Sydney-based Islamic State (IS) cell after authorities became aware of his activity in 2019, the ABC reported. <\/p>\n

But Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an “assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence”.<\/p>\n

Residents on the otherwise quiet, suburban street have described how the tumult of the last 48 hours has unsettled the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

“My daughter was yelling at me, ‘mum look outside’ and I saw lots of police, lots of cars, sirens and loudspeakers calling them to come out,” Lemanatua Fatu, who lives opposite the men, told the BBC.<\/p>\n

“Then I saw the news – I thought oh my goodness, it can’t be them.”<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Gabriela Pomeroy and Thomas Spencer<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

#Bondis #Hanukkah #festival #turned #joy #horror #minutes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johanna Chisholmand BBC Verify… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}