Twelve people are de@d after a mass sh**ting at Bondi Beach, where two men have stood on a pedestrian bridge and opened f*re on families and crowds gathered in the areas below.
One of the g*nmen is among the fatalities, according to police. Another 29 people have been injured, including two police officers.
Videos and witness accounts have been shared widely. This is what they tell us about how the te**orist @tt@ck unfolded.
Witnesses who were in the North Bondi area told ABC News that early on Sunday evening they heard several loud bangs before seeing people around them !njured and bl**ding.
Further towards the south end of the beach, witness Marley Carroll said he heard two loud bangs before “a rush of people” ran towards him.
“They were running away from the sh**ter to us,” he said.
“That’s when we realised everyone around us was just running and people were running on the roads, car horns going off, people were crying and I recall a group of girls running past us saying, ‘He’s sh**ting people, he’s sh**ting people.’”
Police said they started to receive reports of sh*ts being fired at an area called Archer Park in Bondi Beach at 6:47pm AEDT.
Around the same time, mobile phones in Sydney’s east started to light up as friends and family urgently asked one another: “Are you in Bondi?”
In the popular Facebook group Bondi Local Loop, where more than 150,000 members post about beach parties and selling pot plants, desperate messages started to emerge: “What on Earth is going on at the beach?”
Then videos started to circulate among locals.
In footage that has now been independently verified by the ABC, two men can be seen standing on the cement pedestrian bridge at the northern end of the beach, f!r!ng towards crowds.
There are several angles of the @tt@ck from the footbridge, including from a drone that was overhead at the time.
On a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer, Bondi Beach is incredibly beautiful and incredibly popular. At the northern end, crowds settle in for sunset on the beach, in the park and on the hill that provides a view of it all.
There is an area often used for festivals and events, as well as a children’s playground.
To get to the northern end of the world-famous beach, pedestrians can cross a cement bridge that moves them from the main street that runs the length of the beach, Campbell Parade, over car parks to the grassy areas, the sand and eventually the sea.
This is a path well trodden by Bondi Beach goers.
But on Sunday afternoon, two men stood on that footbridge with firearms and k!lled multiple people and !njured dozens more.
In the area in front of them, a Jewish festival was being held. The Chanukah by the Sea event was reportedly attended by families, and officials have said at least one child has been !njured.
Sunday is the first day of Chanukah, or Hanukkah, an eight-day Jewish festival of lights.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the sh**ting was a “targeted @tt@ck on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah”.
In the area under the footbridge were parked cars where the ABC understands people were taking shelter.
A video shows that sometime before 7:30pm one of the g*nmen had moved off the bridge onto the footpath level and was rushed by a member of the public.
In the footage, a man can be seen creeping up behind the g*nman, before grabbing the firearm and turning it on the @tt@cker.
This man has been hailed a hero, single-handedly disarming one of the g*nmen and putting himself in harm’s way to do it.
By 7:30pm, a video of two men lying face down on the footbridge was shared among locals.
In the video, the men are not moving and police are attempting to handcuff them as locals film the scene and scre@m at the g*nmen who have just devastated a community and a city.
There has been a mammoth response in Bondi, with locals, tourists and lifeguards tending to the injured. Locals have offered those stuck in the area their living rooms to sit and wait and talk.
Bondi Lifeguards posted on social media saying that while the te**orist @tta@ck was underway, they were still rescuing people from the waves out at sea.
Dozens of police and ambulance units responded, with a massive operation underway for hours after the sh**ting stopped.
Authorities cordoned off a wide area around Bondi Beach, stopping cars entering the area. They were warning that while one g*nmen was de@d and the other in custody, they believed there was a threat from improvised explosive device in their vehicle at the scene.
At 9:36pm AEDT police designated this event as a te**orist @tt@ck.
“I have also authorised special powers … to ensure that if there is a third offender, and we are currently investigating that at the moment, we will make sure that we prevent any further activity,” NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said.
At about the same time, one of the g*nmen was named as Naveed Akram.
By 11pm AEDT police confirmed the explosive material had been secured and relocated, and while there was no longer an active operation, the site was now officially a cr!me scene.
