I’m going to guess the shooters were white supremacists with incoherent ideology
The guy who tackled one of the shooters to take his shotgun away is a legend though
Update: Appears one of the suspects is likely Middle East/Arabic/Subcontinent background. Going to see a rise in racism for sure
Update 2: Rabbi Schlanger (pro Israel man who wrote a letter to Albanese to deny Palestine statehood and is also one of the organisers of the even taking place at Bondi Beach) is one of the dead. ASIO claim one of the shooters was known to them, of course. Now up to 16 dead
Horrifying scenes. That video of the bloke that tackled one of the gunmen is one of the craziest things ive seen. What an absolute hero.
Ahmed al-Ahmed is the name of the guy who tackled the gunman. It’s going to blunt the Islamophobic response that will come in response to this attack.
Updated info on Ahmed al-Ahmed (feel free to edit into body of your post if you want to):
Ahmed al Ahmed’s cousin gives an interview to Al Araby. Full translation in the subtitles, but key highlights:
His full name is Ahmed Fathi Al-Ahmed
Ahmed is Australian, of Syrian origin, from the city of Idlib, from the village of Al-Nayrab
He didn’t know; it was not targeting Jews. He saw an armed man shooting at people. When he saw people dying and being shot, he couldn’t bear it.
At first, he wasn’t thinking about dying. When he saw people dying and bullets flying above his head, he said, “God gave me courage.”
Regret? No, God forbid. On the contrary, it was a heroic act. Why regret it? He is proud that he saved lives. Only God knows how many people would have died.
We live in Australia with all nationalities and sects. In our life, we never think about these things—whether someone is of a certain nationality or religion. Here, we don’t care whether someone is Jewish, Syrian, Muslim, or otherwise
Source: TwitterUpdate: Appears one of the suspects is likely Middle East/Arabic/Subcontinent background. Going to see a rise in racism for sure
Naveed Akram has been named as one of the shooters. Reports are that he’s of Pakistani origin and he is Muslim.
Fortunately the guy who tackled one of the shooters has an Arabic name so my hope that’s going to dampen down the inevitable response of racism and islamophobia.
