Mass attacks have been rare in the wake of stringent gun controls brought in after the Port Arthur massacre of 1996
An terrorist attack on a Hanukah celebration at Australia’s most famous beach has left at least 12 people dead, including one attacker, after gunmen opened fire from a nearby footbridge. Prime minister Anthony Albanese said the “targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukah, which should be a day of joy … [was] an act of evil antisemitism”. A further 29 people, including two police officers responding to the attack, were taken to hospital with injuries.
Read more: ‘It was a massacre’: how antisemitic terror exploded the peaceful idyll of Bondi beach
Six people died in a gunbattle at a rural property in Wieambilla, Queensland. Two police officers, Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, were shot and killed by extremist Christian conspiracy theorists. The three shooters – Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train – and one of their neighbours, Alan Dare, were shot dead by police. An inquest heard that the Train family had “shared paranoid delusions”.
Read more: Two Australian police officers were killed in an ambush. It was deemed terrorism – but an inquest says otherwise
