Summary
A knife attacker has killed six people and wounded several others in a shopping centre in Sydney. Eight more people have been wounded – including a nine-month-old child who has undergone surgery. Four women and a man died in the shopping centre and another woman later died in hospital, police said.
The attacker was also shot dead by police after being confronted by a lone officer. Reports said that, when challenged, he raised the knife at the officer, who shot him dead.
The attacker has been identified as a 40-year-old man who was known to police, with officers adding they do not think he was motivated by terrorism.
Members of the UK’s royal family expressed their sadness at the attack. The king said “My wife and I were utterly shocked and horrified to hear of the tragic stabbing incident in Bondi. Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who have been so brutally killed during such a senseless attack.”
The Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has praised the police officer who confronted and shot the attacker, saying “she is certainly a hero. There is no doubt that she saved lives through her action”.
Emergency services were first called to Westfield Bondi Junction following reports multiple people had been stabbed at 3.30pm (6.30am UK time).
The supervisor of a luggage store in the shopping centre said he witnessed the attacker stab a woman, and saw the bodies of four people on the ground – including two security guards.
Yohan Francois Philip, aged 29, told the PA news agency he stayed inside the store with several colleagues and customers as “a growing movement of around 50-ish” ran past, before a woman approaching the shop banged on the door and asked to be let in.
As I was letting her in, the perpetrator fell behind her with a knife and I saw him and so did the other customers in the store locked in with us and so we quickly pulled her in, locked the door, he got up and we realised he just stabbed two security guards. Then he ran across, to the corner part of the luggage store, to the premium section, and he stabbed a woman which I saw happen right in front of me.
Philips, who also works as a lawyer, added:
There was a nurse in the store who was adamant she wanted to leave and help ... she wanted to go help the security guard and I said ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen if I open this door’ but, on her decision, I let her out.
We were still locked in the store at that point and we assumed the gunshots were actually gun fights between a police officer and him – that’s not the case now, but yeah. So we waited and waited until we had further instruction. The sirens are going off at that point. We’ve got a view of the back of our store onto the public street and we saw people running out of the store and then later on we saw ambulances and cops and bodies, people being wheeled out.
As he was eventually escorted outside by police officers, he “counted four bodies” on the ground in the shopping centre and witnessed the baby that was attacked during the stabbing spree being wheeled out of the building, he said.
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