The 50-year-old father died at the scene. His 24-year-old son remained in a coma in hospital on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
Albanese confirmed that Australia’s main domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Agency, had investigated the son for six months in 2019.
Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that ASIO had examined the son’s ties to a Sydney-based Islamic State group cell. Albanese did not describe the associates, but said ASIO was interested in them rather than the son.
Those killed included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor.
None of the dead or wounded victims have been formally named by the authorities. Identities of those killed, who ranged in age from 10 to 87, began to emerge in news reports Monday.
Among them was Rabbi Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and an organizer of the family Hanukkah event that was targeted, according to Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish movement that runs outreach worldwide and sponsors events during major Jewish holidays.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the death of an Israeli citizen, but gave no further details. French President Emmanuel Macron said a French citizen, identified as Dan Elkayam, was among those killed.
Larisa Kleytman told reporters outside St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney that her husband, Alexander Kleytman, was among the dead. The couple were both Holocaust survivors, according to The Australian newspaper.
The horror at Australia’s most popular beach was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. The removal of rapid-fire rifles has markedly reduced the death tolls from such acts of violence since then.
Albanese called the Bondi massacre an act of antisemitic terrorism that struck at the heart of the nation.
Meanwhile, the massacre provoked questions about whether Albanese and his government had done enough to curb rising antisemitism. Jewish leaders and the massacre’s survivors expressed fear and fury as they questioned why the men hadn’t been detected before they opened fire.
“There’s been a heap of inaction,” said Lawrence Stand, a Sydney man who raced to a bar mitzvah celebration in Bondi when the violence erupted to find his 12-year-old daughter.
Australia, a country of 28 million people, is home to about 117,000 Jews, according to official figures. Over the past year, the country was rocked by antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne. Synagogues and cars were torched, businesses and homes graffitied and Jews attacked in those cities, where 85% of the nation’s Jewish population lives.
The Australian government has enacted various measures to counter a surge in antisemitism since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel launched a war on Hamas in Gaza in response.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he warned Australia’s leaders months ago about the dangers of failing to take action against antisemitism. He claimed Australia’s decision, in line with scores of other countries, to recognize a Palestinian state “pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.”
