Police Were Warned of Terror Risk Before Bondi Attack, Report Says

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Police Were Warned of Terror Risk Before Bondi Attack, Report Says

A Jewish security group told police an attack on the community was “likely” because of heightened antisemitism, days before December’s mass shooting in Sydney.

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A memorial at Bondi Beach, the site of the attack, in Sydney, Australia, in December.

Credit...

Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

By

Victoria Kim

and

Laura Chung

Reporting from Sydney, Australia

April 30, 2026,

4:26 a.m. ET

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A Jewish security group warned local police of heightened risk of a terrorist attack amid a “high level of antisemitic vilification” in the days leading up to

December’s terrorist attack

at a Hanukkah event in Bondi Beach, according to a report from a high-level inquiry into the shooting.

The interim report released on Thursday by the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion marks the first comprehensive review of the attack, the deadliest mass shooting in Australia in three decades, which left 15 people dead and 40 wounded.

The report sets the stage for public hearings beginning next week that will scrutinize the federal government’s intelligence arrangements, police preparedness and response as well as the rise in antisemitism in broader Australian society. A final report is expected to be delivered in December.

Thursday’s report stopped short of pointing to specific shortcomings in public agencies’ counterterrorism or intelligence operations that may have contributed to the attack, or diagnosing the rise in antisemitism in Australia that many in the Jewish community

had warned of

since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023. Those questions may be aired in the coming public hearings.

The report did say that counterterrorism capability “could be improved” at both a national and state level and recommended that police support and protection of Jewish festivals and events be extended.

Among the 14 recommendations were that authorities move quickly to tighten firearms regulations and carry out gun buyback schemes.

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