Politics
Australia mulls tougher gun laws after father and son kill 15 at Bondi Beach
- Two Daesh flags were found in the gunmen’s vehicle: state media.
- Gunmen identified as father-son duo Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram.
- PM hints at considering limits on weapons permitted by licence.
SYDNEY: Australia signalled plans for tougher gun laws on Monday as the country began mourning victims of its worst mass shooting in almost 30 years, in which a father and son duo killed 15 people at a Jewish celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
The father, a 50-year-old, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in critical condition in hospital, police said at a press conference on Monday.
As many as 40 people were taken to hospital following the attack, including two police officers who are in serious but stable condition, police said. The victims were aged between 10 and 87.
Police did not release the shooters’ names, but said the father had held a firearms license since 2015 and had six registered weapons. One of the suspected attackers was known to authorities but had not been deemed an immediate threat, security officials said.
They were identified as Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram by state broadcaster ABC and other local media outlets.
Home Minister Tony Burke said the father arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, while his son is an Australian-born citizen.
Police did not provide details about the firearms, but videos from the scene showed the men firing what appeared to be a bolt-action rifle and a shotgun.
“We are very much working through the background of both persons. At this stage, we know very little about them,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters.
Two Daesh flags were found in the gunmen’s vehicle, Australia’s national broadcaster ABC News said in a report, without citing any source.
The shooting has raised questions about whether Australia’s gun laws, already among the toughest in the world, remain fit for purpose.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would ask cabinet to consider limits on the number of weapons permitted by a gun licence, and how long a licence should last.
“People’s circumstances can change,” he told reporters.
“People can be radicalised over a period of time. Licences should not be in perpetuity.”
Hero bystander
Witnesses said the attack at the famed beach, which was packed on a hot weekend evening, lasted about 10 minutes, sending about 1,000 people attending a Hanukkah event scattering along the sand and into nearby streets.
A bystander captured on video tackling and disarming an armed man during the attack has been hailed as a hero whose actions saved lives. 7News Australia named him as Ahmed al Ahmed, citing a relative, who said the 43-year-old fruit shop owner had been shot twice and had undergone surgery.
A fundraising page for the man had raised more than A$550,000 ($365,000) by Monday afternoon.
Bondi local Morgan Gabriel, 27, said she had been heading to a nearby cinema when she heard what she thought were fireworks, before people started running up her street.
“I sheltered about six or seven. Two of them were actually my close friends, and the rest were just people that were on the street … their phones had been left down the beach, and everyone was just trying to get away,” she said.
“It’s a very sad time this morning [….] Normally, like on a Monday or any morning, it’s packed. People are swimming, surfing, running. So this is very, very quiet. And there’s definitely a solemn sort of vibe.”
A makeshift memorial with flowers and Israeli and Australian flags was set up at the Bondi pavilion and an online condolence book was established.
Police and private Jewish security guards wearing earpieces were positioned around as mourners paid respects and laid flowers.
‘Pure evil’
Authorities said they were confident only two attackers were involved in the incident, after previously saying they were checking whether a third offender was involved.
At the suspects’ home in Bonnyrigg, a suburb around 36 kilometres (22 miles) west of the central business district, there was a heavy police presence on Monday, with a cordon wrapping around several neighbouring houses.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Bondi Beach on Monday morning to lay flowers near the scene of the attack.
“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of antisemitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location,” Albanese told reporters.
“The Jewish community are hurting today. Today, all Australians wrap our arms around them and say, we stand with you. We will do whatever is necessary to stamp out antisemitism. It is a scourge, and we will eradicate it together.”
Albanese said several world leaders including US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron had reached out and offered condolences and support.
Sunday’s shootings were the most serious in a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars in Australia since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had warned Albanese that Australia’s support for Palestinian statehood would fuel antisemitism.
In August, Australia accused Iran of directing at least two antisemitic attacks and gave Tehran’s ambassador a week to leave the country.
‘Rare’ mass shooting
Mass shootings are rare in Australia, one of the world’s safest countries. Sunday’s attack was the worst since 1996, when a gunman killed 35 people at the Port Arthur tourist site in the southern island state of Tasmania.
Rabbi Mendel Kastel, whose brother-in-law Eli Schlanger was killed in Sunday’s attack, said it had been a harrowing evening.
“You can very easily become very angry and try to blame people, turn on people but that’s not what this is about. It’s about a community,” he said.
“We need to step up at a time like this, be there for each other, and come together. And we will, and we will get through this, and we know that. The Australian community will help us do it,” he added.
Local woman Danielle, who declined to give her surname, was at the beach when the shooting occurred and raced to collect her daughter, who was attending a bar mitzvah at a function centre near where the alleged shooters were positioned.
“I heard there was a shooting so I bolted there to get my daughter, I could hear gunshots, I saw bodies on the ground. We are used to being scared, we have felt this way since October 7.”
Australia’s Jewish diaspora is small but deeply embedded in the wider community, with about 150,000 people who identify as Jewish in the country of 27 million. About one-third of them are estimated to live in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, including Bondi.
Some 287 candidates will be considered for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Thursday, with US President Donald Trump likely to be among the nominees.
Of this year’s nominations, 208 are individuals and 79 are organisations, said Kristian Berg Harpviken, adding that there were many new nominees compared to last year.
“Since I am new in the job, one of the things that has to some extent surprised me is how much renewal there is from year to year on the list,” Harpviken said in an interview. He has held the position since January 2025.
Despite the number of conflicts rising worldwide and international cooperation under pressure, the award remains relevant, he added.
“The Peace Prize is even more important in a period like the one we’re living in,” he said. “There is as much good work, if not more, than ever.”
Trump likely nominated, but not confirmed
The leaders of Cambodia, Israel and Pakistan have said they nominated Trump for this year’s prize. Their nominations, if made, would have been done in spring and summer 2025, and they are therefore valid given the deadline was January 31.
There is no way of verifying they have done as they have said as nominations remain secret for 50 years and Harpviken declined to say on Thursday whether Trump had been nominated.
A nomination is not an endorsement by the award body.
In addition to committee members, thousands of people worldwide can propose names: members of governments and parliaments; current heads of state; university professors of history, social sciences, law and philosophy; and former Nobel Peace Prize laureates, among others.
Many names appear on betting sites giving odds on this year’s possible laureates, from Russia’s Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, to Pope Leo and Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, a volunteer aid group, among others.
Concern for health of jailed Iranian laureate
Harpviken said the committee was deeply concerned about the health of the 2023 Peace Prize laureate, Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, which is worsening after she suffered a heart attack in prison.
Her supporters said on Wednesday her life was in imminent danger.
“Her sister was able to visit her in prison yesterday and the reports coming out after that are actually quite alarming as to her health condition,” said Harpviken.
“We see there is a lot of international pressure now. So we hope that the Iranian authorities do pay attention to that and release her so that she can have proper medical treatment.”
Who else could be nominated?
Among possible nominees for this year’s prize are Lisa Murkowski, the US senator for Alaska, and Aaja Chemnitz, a member of the Danish parliament elected from Greenland, according to the Norwegian lawmaker who nominated them both.
“Together they have worked relentlessly to build trust and to secure a peaceful development of the Arctic region over many years,” said the lawmaker, Lars Haltbrekken.
Greenland has been in particular focus this year due to Trump’s relentless push to acquire the island from Nato ally Denmark.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 9, while the ceremony will take place on December 10.
A US federal jury convicted an Afghan man on Wednesday of providing support to the Daesh in Afghanistan but failed to agree on whether he was involved in the deadly 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport.
Mohammad Sharifullah, a member of the Daesh-Khorasan, was convicted in Virginia of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organisation.
President Donald Trump, in an address to Congress last year, had described Sharifullah as the “top terrorist responsible” for the Kabul airport attack that killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 American troops.
The jury found Sharifullah guilty of providing support to Daesh but deadlocked after two days of deliberations on whether he played a role in the Kabul airport suicide bombing.
According to prosecutors, Sharifullah scouted out the route to the airport where the suicide bomber later detonated his device among packed crowds trying to flee days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.
The United States withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, ending a chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans who had rushed to Kabul’s airport in the hopes of boarding a flight out of the country.
Sharifullah was extradited to the United States in March 2025 and put on trial in Alexandria on the outskirts of the US capital.
He faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to the US authorities, Sharifullah was involved in a number of Daesh-Khorasan attacks between 2016 and his arrest by Pakistani authorities in 2025.
They included a June 2016 suicide bombing that targeted Nepali security guards protecting the Canadian embassy in Kabul.
Sharifullah was accused of conducting surveillance and transporting the suicide bomber to the attack site.
He was also accused of giving weapons instructions to Daesh-Khorasan gunmen who attacked the Crocus City Hall near Moscow in March 2024.
- Khamenei says US faces disgraceful defeat in its plan.
- Iran to secure Gulf, eliminate “enemy’s abuses”: supreme leader.
- Iranian rial has fallen to historic lows against dollar.
Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a published written message on Thursday that a new chapter for the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz has been taking shape since the Iran war with the United States and Israel broke out on February 28.
Iran’s Supreme Leader said that Tehran would secure the Gulf region and eliminate what he described as “the enemy’s abuses of the waterway.”
The Supreme Leader added that new management of the Strait of Hormuz would bring calm, progress and economic benefits to all Gulf nations.
“Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait.
Khamenei was wounded in the initial US-Israeli strikes that assassinated his father Ali Khamenei, and has not been seen in public since being named his successor as supreme leader last month.
The United States imposed a blockade on Iran’s ports two weeks ago, while the Islamic republic has maintained its stranglehold over the strategic Strait of Hormuz since the start of the Middle East war in February.
Now, a State Department official told AFP, Washington is seeking to set up an international coalition comprising allied states and shipping firms to coordinate safe passage through Hormuz — while maintaining its own blockade of ships serving Iran.
“Any attempt to impose a maritime blockade or restrictions is contrary to international law… and is doomed to fail,” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said, in a statement that warned the blockade that began on April 13 would be “a disruption to lasting stability in the Persian Gulf”.
And Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has emerged as an influential figure, said control of Hormuz would allow Tehran to “provide itself and its neighbours with the precious blessing of a future free from American presence and interference”.
‘Choking’
Trump is expected to receive a briefing on Thursday on new plans for potential military action in Iran from Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, two sources with knowledge of US planning told news site Axios.
This week Trump has reportedly told oil executives and national security officials to prepare for a long US blockade designed to force Tehran to surrender its nuclear programme.
US Central Command said on Wednesday in a social media post that it had reached a “significant milestone after successfully redirecting the 42nd commercial vessel attempting to violate the blockade”.
It said there are “41 tankers with 69 million barrels of oil that the Iranian regime can’t sell”, estimating the value at more than $6 billion.
Oil prices struck a four-year high on Thursday. International benchmark Brent crude soared more than 7% to $126 a barrel, but then eased in midday trading in London.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said the closure of Hormuz was “strangling the global economy” and International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol told a meeting at his Paris headquarters: “The world is facing the biggest energy crisis in history.”
The European Central Bank also warned that the longer the war and high energy prices continue, “the stronger is the likely impact on broader inflation and the economy.”
Trump faces domestic political pressure to end the war, which is unpopular even with much of his base, has increased costs for American consumers and has unnerved US allies.
Iran’s economy is also suffering and the rial has fallen to historic lows against the dollar.
US Fed holds interest rates unchanged between 3.5-3.75%
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