SYDNEY (AP) \u2014 An accused gunman in Sydney\u2019s Bondi Beach massacre was charged with 59 offenses including 15 charges of murder on Wednesday, as hundreds of mourners gathered in Sydney to begin funerals for the victims.<\/p>\n
Two shooters slaughtered 15 people on Sunday in an antisemitic mass shooting<\/a> targeting Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach<\/a>, and 17 people are still being treated in hospitals. All of those killed by the gunmen who have been identified so far<\/a> were Jewish.<\/p>\n Health authorities said Thursday that one patient remained in a critical condition.<\/p>\n As investigations unfold, Australia faces a social and political reckoning about antisemitism, gun control and whether police protections for Jews at events such as Sunday\u2019s were sufficient for the threats they faced.<\/p>\n Accused shooter charged in hospital<\/p>\n Naveed Akram, the 24-year-old alleged shooter, was charged on Wednesday after waking from a coma in a Sydney hospital, where he has been since police shot him and his father at Bondi. His father Sajid Akram, 50, died at the scene.<\/p>\n The charges include one count of murder for each fatality and one count of committing a terrorist act, police said.<\/p>\n Akram was also charged with 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded and with placing an explosive near a building with intent to cause harm.<\/p>\n Police said the Akrams\u2019 car, which was found at the crime scene, contained improvised explosive devices.<\/p>\n Akram\u2019s lawyer did not enter pleas and did not request his client\u2019s release on bail during a video court appearance from his hospital bed, a court statement said.<\/p>\n He is being represented by Legal Aid NSW, which has a policy of refusing media comment on behalf of clients. Akram is expected to remain under police guard in hospital until he is well enough to be transferred to a prison.<\/p>\n A father of 5 who ministered in prisons is buried<\/p>\n Meanwhile, families from Sydney\u2019s close-knit Jewish community gathered on Wednesday, one after another, to begin to bury their dead. The victims of the attack ranged in age from a 10-year-old girl to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. <\/p>\n Jews are usually buried within 24 hours from their deaths, but funerals have been delayed by coroner\u2019s investigations. <\/p>\n The first farewelled was Eli Schlanger, 41, a husband and father of five who served as the assistant rabbi at Chabad-Lubavitch of Bondi and organized Sunday\u2019s Chanukah by the Sea event where the attack unfolded. The London-born Schlanger also served as chaplain in prisons across New South Wales state and in a Sydney hospital. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter what happened, my biggest regret was \u2014 apart from, obviously, the obvious \u2013 I could have done more to tell Eli more often how much we love him, how much I love him, how much we appreciate everything that he does and how proud we are of him,\u201d said Schlanger\u2019s father-in-law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, who sometimes spoke through tears. <\/p>\n \u201cI hope he knew that. I\u2019m sure he knew it,\u201d Ulman said. \u201cBut I think it should\u2019ve been said more often.\u201d<\/p>\n One mourner, Dmitry Chlafma, said as he left the service that Schlanger was his longtime rabbi.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can tell by the amount of people that are here how much he meant to the community,\u201d Chlafma said. \u201cHe was warm, happy, generous, one of a kind.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside the funeral, not far from the site of the attack, the mood was hushed and grim, with a heavy police presence. <\/p>\n Authorities are probing a suspected connection to the Islamic State group<\/p>\n Authorities believe that the shooting was \u201ca terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,\u201d Australia\u2019s federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett said Tuesday. <\/p>\n The Islamic State group<\/a> is a scattered and considerably weaker group since a 2019 U.S.-led military intervention drove it out of territory it had seized in Iraq and Syria, but its cells remain active and it has inspired a number of independent attacks including in western countries.<\/p>\n Authorities are also examining a trip the suspects made to the Philippines in November. <\/p>\n Groups of Muslim separatist militants, including Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines<\/a>, once expressed support for IS and have hosted small numbers of foreign militants from Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past. Philippine military and police officials say there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants in the country\u2019s south.<\/p>\n Leader pledges action on guns and antisemitism<\/p>\n The news that the suspects were apparently inspired by the Islamic State group provoked more questions about whether Australia\u2019s government had done enough to stem hate-fueled crimes, especially directed at Jews. In Sydney and Melbourne, where 85% of Australia\u2019s Jewish population lives, a wave of antisemitic attacks<\/a> has been recorded in the past year.<\/p>\n After Jewish leaders and survivors of Sunday\u2019s attack lambasted the government for not heeding their warnings of violence, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed Wednesday to take whatever government action was needed to stamp out antisemitism.<\/p>\n Albanese and the leaders of some Australian states have pledged to tighten the country\u2019s already strict gun laws<\/a> in what would be the most sweeping reforms since a shooter killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996. Mass shootings in Australia have since been rare<\/a>.<\/p>\n Albanese has announced plans to further restrict access to guns, in part because it emerged the older suspect had amassed six weapons legally. Proposed measures include restricting gun ownership to Australian citizens and limiting the number of weapons a person can hold. <\/p>\n Australians come together to grieve<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Australians seeking ways to make sense of the horror settled on practical acts. Hours-long lines were reported at blood donation sites and at dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of swimmers formed a circle on the sand, where they held a minute\u2019s silence. Then they ran into the sea.<\/p>\n Not far away, part of the beach remained behind police tape as the investigation into the massacre continued, shoes and towels abandoned as people fled still strewn across the sand. <\/p>\n One event that would return to Bondi was the Hanukkah celebration the gunmen targeted, which has run for 31 years, Ulman said. It would be in defiance of the attackers\u2019 wish to make people feel like it was dangerous to live as Jews, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cEli lived and breathed this idea that we can never ever allow them not only to succeed, but anytime that they try something we become greater and stronger,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to show the world that the Jewish people are unbeatable.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Graham-McLay reported from Wellington and McGuirk from Melbourne. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY (AP) \u2014 An accused gunman in Sydney\u2019s Bondi Beach massacre was charged with 59 offenses including 15…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":454477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[38602,12648,4740,4219,208323,206955,14414,57,4222,4221,4228,63644,2936,207013,15056,50,56708,2068,365,3677,13048,103,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-454476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-anthony-albanese","9":"tag-antisemitism","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-dmitry-chlafma","13":"tag-eli-schlanger","14":"tag-funerals-and-memorial-services","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-gun-violence","17":"tag-homicide","18":"tag-indictments","19":"tag-islamic-state-group","20":"tag-law-enforcement","21":"tag-naveed-akram","22":"tag-new-south-wales","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-philippines-government","25":"tag-race-and-ethnicity","26":"tag-religion","27":"tag-shootings","28":"tag-sydney","29":"tag-world","30":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115737900150586101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}