Australia links the shooters to the Islamic State and reveals they had traveled to the Philippines
The two attackers had visited the south of the archipelago, where terrorist groups operate and private military training is also conducted.
BarcelonaThe authors of the shooting at a Jewish celebration on Bondi beach, In Sydney, they may have been inspired by the Islamic State, specifically following a recent trip to the Philippines taken by the father and son, according to Australian authorities. Police also revealed that homemade explosives and two Islamic State flags were found in the son's car. Until now, Canberra had maintained that there was no indication of radicalization among the perpetrators, beyond a 2019 investigation that was later dropped.
Authorities have identified the perpetrators of the Hanukkah attack that killed 15 people and injured around 40 as Sajid Akram, who was shot dead by police, and his son Naveed, who was arrested. According to police, the father obtained a firearms license in 2023, although his son, a bricklayer by trade, had been investigated by intelligence services in October 2019 for his alleged associations with other individuals. An investigation that, according to the Australian press, was linked to an Islamic State cell. There is no indication that it remained under police surveillance. Philippine authorities have confirmed the trip abroad and described Sajid as an Indian citizen: father and son arrived in the country on November 1, visited Davao in the south, and left on November 28. Authorities will now analyze whether this trip, along with Sajid obtaining a gun license, the purchase of six firearms, and Naveed's alleged links to Islamic extremism in 2019, are related. According to Indian police, Sajid Akram was originally from Hyderabad in the south of the country. He moved to Australia in 1998 to find work, married, and settled permanently. According to information provided to Indian police by his relatives, Akram had had "limited contact" with his family in Hyderabad since his move, but had returned to India six times, primarily for family reasons. "Family members have expressed no knowledge of his mindset or radical activities, nor of the circumstances that led to his radicalization," a police official added, according to the BBC. Clarke Jones, an academic at the Australian National University (ANU) who has worked with imprisoned extremists in the Philippines, explained in The Guardian It is unlikely that tourists will receive training from terrorist groups like the Islamic State or Abu Sayyaf, usually located in the south of the country, due to its geographical isolation and the dangers of travel. Even so, he noted that private military training, not linked to extremist groups, is available in the country. Jones also highlighted the close intelligence cooperation between Australia and the Philippines, which should make it possible to determine what the father and son were doing during the visit.
The Other Heroes
Ahmed al-Ahmad, a 43-year-old fruit vendor of Syrian origin,He has become the hero of the day of the attackAfter managing to disarm one of the attackers by grabbing him from behind, Al Ahmed, who is recovering from multiple gunshot wounds in the hospital, was not the only one who confronted the shooters. On Tuesday, footage from a dashcam at the scene went viral, showing two people trying to disarm one of the attackers. They are Boris Gurman, 69, and his wife Sofia, 61, who were killed in the shooting. The video shows Gurman struggling with one of the attackers and taking his weapon before they both fall to the ground. Gurman then gets up and appears to strike the attacker, but the man has another gun which he uses to kill the couple. According to the newspaper Sydney Morning Herald The Gurman couple, who were Jewish, were the first two people killed in Sunday's shooting.