A father and son were driven by “Islamic State ideology” when they fired on crowds at Bondi Beach in one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said yesterday.
Sajid Akram and his son Naveed opened fire on people thronging the famous beach for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Sunday evening, killing 15 people and wounding dozens more.
Authorities said the attack was designed to sow panic among the nation’s Jews, but have so far given little detail about the gunmen’s deeper motivations.
Photo: Reuters
Albanese gave one of the first hints that the pair had been radicalized by an “ideology of hate.”
“It would appear that this was motivated by Islamic State ideology,” Albanese told national broadcaster ABC.
The pair traveled to the Philippines before the shootings and authorities are investigating whether they met Islamist extremists during the trip, Australian media reported.
The Philippine Bureau of Immigration confirmed that the pair spent almost all of last month in the Philippines, with their final destination listed as Davao.
The province, on the southern island of Mindanao, has a long history of Islamist insurgencies against central government rule.
Indian police said that Sajid Akram was an Indian citizen, who had left his home in the city of Hyderabad in the southern state of Telangana in 1998.
He had had “limited contact with his family” since, they said in a statement, adding that Naveed Akram is an Australian citizen.
Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who was visiting Israel yesterday, offered his “very sincere, deep condolences,” and said New Delhi condemns the attack “in the strongest possible terms.”
Police found a car registered to Naveed Akram parked near the beach, with improvised bombs and two “homemade” Islamic State group flags inside, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said.
Authorities are also facing mounting questions over whether they could have acted earlier to foil the attack.
Albanese said Naveed Akram, reportedly an unemployed bricklayer, had come to the attention of Australia’s intelligence agency in 2019, but was not considered an imminent threat at the time.
He reportedly told his mother on the day of the attack that he was heading out of the city on a fishing trip. Instead, authorities believe that he was holed up in a rental apartment with his father.
Carrying long-barrelled guns, they peppered the beach and a nearby park with bullets for 10 minutes before police shot and killed 50-year-old Sajid.
Naveed Akram, 24, remains in a coma in hospital under police guard.
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