The Indian police said on Tuesday that one of the attackers in the Bondi Beach shooting in Australia, Sajid Akram, was from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad but had frequent contact with relatives there.
The youngest of 50-year-old Akram’s victims is just a few months old, according to local media. The 24-year-old son of the man, who has been named by local newspapers as Naveed Akram and is believed to have acted as an accomplice, was in critical condition after he too had been shot.
Hyderabad is the capital of Telangana state. Both men had visited the Philippines last month, Australian police said, the father on an Indian passport and the son on an Australian one.
“Family members state that they were not aware of his radical mindset and the activities he was doing, or what led to his radicalisation,” Telangana state police said in a statement.
The reason for their trip is under investigation, officials said, and the authorities have yet to establish whether they were affiliated with any terrorist group or underwent training in that country.
The reasons behind the radicalisation of the two militants were “not associated with India or anything local” in Telangana, police in that state said.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, the Telangana police claimed that Sajid Akram had visited India six times since he migrated to Australia in 1998, with majority of his visits being family-related.
“No adverse record existed against him” before he traveled to India, the statement said.
Ahmed, you are an Australian hero.
You put yourself at risk to save others, running towards danger on Bondi Beach and disarming a terrorist.
In the worst of times, we see the best of Australians. And that’s exactly what we saw on Sunday night.
On behalf of every Australian, I… pic.twitter.com/mAoObU3TZD
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) December 16, 2025
Sajid and his son Naveed, who claimed to have killed 15 people and wounded dozens at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, landed Nov. 1 with the southern Philippine Davao province as their last port of call.
The father and son spent most of November in the Philippines, with the man entering the country as an Indian national, Manila’s immigration department said on Tuesday.
“Sajid Akram, 50 years of age and Indian, and Naveed Akram, 24 years old and Australian, reached the Philippines together last November 1st from Sydney, Australia,” immigration spokeswoman Dana Sandoval said in a statement to AFP. “They left on November 28th.”
Both men travelled to the Philippines last month, Australian police said on Tuesday, and officials are investigating that trip’s purpose. Philippines police said they are looking into the case.
Islamic State-affiliated networks are known to be present and have some influence in the south of the Philippines. In recent years, they have been reduced to weakened cells operating in the southern Mindanao island, a far cry from the group’s capacity to capture an entire city during the 2017 Marawi siege.
“Early investigations indicate it was a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State, we have found footage and other things that are indicators,” Krissy Barrett, the commissioners of Australian federal police, told journalists in Melbourne.
“Those are the actions of a terrorist group – not a religion.
Police also said improvised explosive devices and two homemade flags of ISIS — or Islamic State, a militant group that Australia and many other countries have designated as a terrorist organization — were found in the vehicle, which is registered to the younger man.
The father and son are accused of firing on hundreds of people at the festival in a 10-minute killing spree at one of Australia’s premier tourist destinations that left people running for their lives and hiding before both were shot by police.
Some 25 survivors were being treated in numerous Sydney hospitals, officials said.
The father and son had been motivated by “Islamic State ideology” when they attacked crowds at Bondi Beach, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday.
“It looks like it’s been this individual operating of his own activities but on the information available, it would’ve appear that Islamic State ideology was a factor.” “I based on the information given to me in recent days, specifically this individual has got some make contact with Sr will allege what individuals are motivated by IS type ideology,” Albanese told national broadcaster ABC.
“We have been facing extremism and this hateful ideology since ISIS emerged over a decade now,” he said in a separate interview.
Naveed, who was believed to have been an unemployed bricklayer, according to Albanese, had been on the radar of the Australian intelligence agency since 2019 but was not deemed as an immediate threat then.
“They interviewed him, they interviewed his family, they interview people that were around him,” Albanese said.
“At that point in time, he was not observed to be a person of interest.”
Israeli Ambassador Amir Maimon arrived in Bondi on Tuesday and brought a charge for the Australian government to do all it can to ensure the security of Jews in Australia.
“Only Jewish Australians who are forced to pray in their synagogues through the front doors with armed guards, with CCTV,” said Maimon, as he laid flowers at a makeshift shrine and paid his respect to the victims.
“My heart is in a million pieces … it’s insane.
A series of anti-Semitic events in Australia has played out over the past 16 months, with the head of the nation’s principal intelligence agency saying that anti-Semitism was his first priority when it comes to life-threatening threats.
At Bondi, the beach was open on Tuesday but almost deserted in grey and overcast conditions as a makeshift memorial of flowers continued to grow outside the Bondi Pavilion metres from where those shot.
Bondi is the busiest – and most famous – of Sydney’s beaches, about 8.2km (5 miles) from the city centre, attracting hundreds of thousands of international visitors annually.
Olivia Robertson, 25, stopped by the memorial before work.
“This is the country our grandparents migrated to for us to be safe and have opportunity,” she said.
“And here now this has occurred in our own backyard. It’s pretty shocking.”
The 43-year-old Muslim father, who also has two children, then tackled one of the gunmen and took his rifle but was caught in crossfire and is recovering with gunshot wounds at a Sydney hospital.
He has been hailed as a hero around the globe, including by US President Donald Trump.
A GoFundMe page created for Ahmed has collected more than A$1.9 million ($1.26 million).
The nation’s gun laws are being reviewed by the federal government after police said Sajid Akram was a licenced gun owner and had six registered weapons.
Akram was not granted a gun license in 2015, as police had previously said on Tuesday.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke agreed legislation passed by Australia’s previous conservative Liberal-National coalition government after the Port Arthur massacre had to be revisited.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard, who introduced the gun restrictions in 1996, said he didn’t want to see reforming gun laws become a “distraction” from the need to address anti-Semitism.
Albanese had disappointed the Jewish community, Howard told reporters.
“He should have fought it, he should have fought anti-Semitism much more, a long time ago,” Mr. Hikind said.
The 15 victims included a 10-year-old girl named Matilda Britvan, a rabbi who was the father of five children and a Holocaust survivor, according to interviews, officials and news coverage.
Two police officers were in critical but stable condition in hospital, New South Wales police said.
Matilda’s aunt has described to the media her family’s heartbreak, saying they were devastated by her death.
“I am at a loss for words that this occurred. I see on the phone, and I just hope it’s like a little bit of joke or something, not real,” Lina Chernykh told 7NEWS Australia.
