Australian police yesterday said they were hunting for three suspects over an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue, designating it a terrorist act.
Mask-wearing attackers set the Adass Israel Synagogue ablaze before dawn on Friday, police said, gutting much of the building.
Some congregants were inside the single-story building at the time, but no serious injuries were reported. The fire sparked international condemnation, including from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Police have “three suspects in that matter, who we are pursuing,” Victorian police chief commissioner Shane Patton told a news conference.
Investigations over the weekend had made “significant progress,” he said, declining to provide further details of the operation.
Officials from the federal and state police, as well as Australia’s intelligence agency, met yesterday and concluded that the fire was “likely a terrorist incident,” the police chief said.
“Based on that, I am very confident that we now have had an attack, a terrorist attack on that synagogue,” he said.
Counterterrorism police have joined the probe. Under Australian law, a terrorist act is one that causes death, injury or serious property damage to advance a political, religious or ideological cause, and is aimed at intimidating the public or a government.
The official designation unlocks help from other federal agencies for the investigation, Australian National University terrorism researcher Michael Zekulin said.
“Basically you get additional resources that you might not otherwise get,” he said.
There is no information to suggest further attacks are likely and Australia’s terror threat assessment will remain at its current level of “probable,” said Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation Director-General Mike Burgess, who has denounced the synagogue attack as an “outrage,” announced the creation of a federal police taskforce targeting anti-Semitism.
“Anti-Semitism is a major threat and anti-Semitism has been on the rise,” Albanese told a news conference, citing the synagogue blaze and recent vandalism.
The taskforce will be made up of federal police to be deployed across the country as needed, officials said.
They will focus on threats, violence and hatred toward the Jewish community and parliamentarians.
The war in Gaza has sparked protests from supporters of Israel and Palestinians in cities around Australia, as in much of the world.
Netanyahu attacked the Australian government’s stance in the run-up to the fire.
“This heinous act cannot be separated from the anti-Israel sentiment emanating from the Australian Labor government,” he said after the attack.
“Anti-Israel sentiment is anti-Semitism,” he said.
Australia last week voted for a UN General Assembly resolution that demanded the end of Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus rejected Netanyahu’s accusation.
“He’s absolutely wrong. I respectfully disagree with Mr Netanyahu,” Dreyfus told national broadcaster ABC on Monday.
“Australia remains a close friend of Israel, as we have been since the Labor government recognized the State of Israel when it was created by the United Nations. Now that remains the position,” he said.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS