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As gunshots rang out and bodies fell, the young mother fell over her 5-year-old son and began to pray.
“Please don’t let us die,” the 33-year-old Rebecca Hiding under a table in a park overlooking Bondi, Australia’s most iconic beach, he prayed to God. Rebecca spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of retribution. “Please keep my son safe.”
It was this belief that attracted Rebecca and hundreds of other members of the Sydney Jewish The community gathers at this picturesque location to celebrate the beginning of Hanukkah. And authorities said it was that belief that made him and others attending Channukah at the Beach the target of two gunmen who opened fire on revelers around 6:40 p.m. Sunday. Officials have called it an anti-Semitic act of terrorism.
In the minutes that followed, officials said at least 15 people would be killed in the attack, including a 10-year-old girl, a Holocaust survivor and a beloved rabbi. It would also erode the sense of security in a country that, due to strict gun laws, has largely been spared the mass shootings common in the United States and other Western countries.
This reconstruction is based on interviews with survivors and footage of the attack.
Under the table holding food for the partygoers, Rebecca pulled the drink bucket over her body to try to hide herself and her son. Suddenly, a man lying just 10 centimeters (3 inches) away from him was shot in the chest.
“I’m dying,” he told Rebecca. “I can’t breathe.”
Under fire and separated from her husband and 7-year-old daughter, Rebecca could offer him nothing but words. “You’ll be okay,” he told her desperately. “You’ll be fine.”
She didn’t know if it was true.
A summer evening shattered by the sound of gunfire
It started as a classic Sunday summer evening sydneyThe sun had not yet set and the temperature was still 29 °C (84 °F), The Tasman Sea was full of swimmers and surfers,
In a park overlooking Bondi’s golden arch of sand, children frolicked and hugged animals at a petting zoo set up as part of Hanukkah celebrations. Rebecca’s son climbed the rock climbing wall. The music competed with the sound of the crashing waves.
And then the bubbles floating in the air were replaced by bullets, laughter was replaced by screams. According to police, from their position on one of the pedestrian bridges connecting the busy main road to the beach, two armed gunmen – a father and son – began firing into the crowd.
Young people began to run away, but older people struggled to get up. Sitting on a bench, Rebecca watched with horror as a bullet hit an elderly woman sitting next to her. Rebecca grabbed her son and sat down under the table.
On the beach and boardwalk, it was chaos.
Some surfers and swimmers paddled wildly to shore, while others sought safety in the ocean. Eleanor, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of retribution, said she was walking along the boardwalk to dinner when she heard the gunshots. His mind went blank, save for one command: “Run.” And so she went into the sea fully dressed.
Crowds of people – gathered on a grassy slope by the ocean to watch the sunset of the Christmas romcom, “The Holiday” – fled, abandoning their blankets and beach chairs.
From their hotel room overlooking the streets of Bondi, Joel Sargent, 30, and his partner, graceFrom Melbourne, I heard shots and started filming. Their footage, obtained by The Associated Press, shows that the shootout lasted at least seven minutes, with dozens of explosions. Grace spoke on the condition that her last name not be used because she did not want people at work to know she was involved.
“Baby, I’m scared,” Grace could be heard saying as she saw a large number of people screaming in front of her building. He shouted at them: “Get out of the road!”
Phones throughout the city lit up with panic calls and messages. Lawrence Stand was at home when his phone rang. It was his 12-year-old daughter, attending a bar mitzvah inside the Bondi Pavilion overlooking the beach.
Stand told his daughter to stay on the phone as he got into his car and drove to the beach. He found her and pulled her and the others into his car, driving them away from the massacre.
Many did not know where to find sanctuary. Inside a Greek restaurant, 20-year-old American friends Shira Elisha and Lexi Haag first hid in the restaurant’s bathroom, and then ran back to Elisha’s house, where they hid under her bed. The couple wondered how this situation was so common but so different to America Australia It was happening here.
Back at the park, the man next to Rebecca was bleeding. Rebecca’s 65-year-old mother-in-law picked up a piece of discarded cardboard and pressed it on her wound.
That man did not survive.
A passerby tackles a gunman
The bullets kept coming. The siren sounded. Minutes passed. In one video a bystander can be heard shouting: “Where are the police?”
That and other widely circulated videos of the attack explain what happened next.
Near one of the attackers, a passerby identified by Interior Minister Tony Burke as Ahmed al-Ahmed was sitting behind a parked car. Ahmed, a fruit shop owner and father of two, ran at the shooter and snatched the gun, before he pointed the weapon at the shooter and he fell to the ground. Ahmed was shot in the shoulder by the other gunman, but survived.
The man, disarmed by Ahmed, got up, but soon fell again due to police firing. The second shooter exchanged fire with police for a minute before he too was killed.
Police later confirmed that one of the two suspected gunmen, a 50-year-old man, was shot dead. His 24-year-old son was shot and injured and is undergoing treatment at the hospital.
Back at the park, rescue workers vigorously pumped the chests of bodies immobilized on the grass, near a picnic table, an abandoned stroller and the petting zoo.
grief the next day
On Monday, American Elisha, who had been hiding in the restaurant bathroom, wandered onto the beach, where rows of shoes left by beachgoers lay spread out in the sand.
“It reminded me of the massacre – all these shoes lying here. It’s like October 7,” he said, referring to a 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants on Israel. “How many times do Jews need to be attacked before the world wakes up and realizes we have targets on our backs?”
After a sleepless night, Rebecca and her sister-in-law, wrapped in Israeli flags, went to the beach to mourn in front of the memorial of flowers.
Since the attack, Rebecca’s children have asked him many questions to which he has no answers, he said.
He has his own questions: He said authorities did little to address the rise in anti-Semitic crimes in Sydney and Melbourne last year.
“The world needs to wake up and see what’s happening,” he said. “They specifically targeted us, the Jewish people. …Nobody did anything. They turned a blind eye.”