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The two men who allegedly carried out the deadly mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach could have been inspired by ISISr have received the actl training to help carry out attacks, militant group experts say.
“I started to think this might have been inspired by ISIS. Now I think it might have been enabled by ISIS or directed by ISIS,“, counterterrorism analyst Colin Clarke said of Sunday’s attack, which killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration.
The suspects were a father and son, aged 50 and 24, authorities said. The elderly man, named by state officials as Sajid Akram, was shot dead by police. His sonidentified as Naveed Akram, was wounded and remains in hospital, suffering from emaepulled out of a coma on Wednesday.
They reportedly shot at hundreds of people for about 10 minutes at the popular tourist destination, forcing them to run and take cover.
Both traveled to the Philippines
Police say the vehicle found at the scene, which was registered to the younger suspect, contained improvised explosive devices and two homemade flags linked to ISIS.
ANDAustralian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett he said later that the shooting was a “terrorist attack inspired by the Islamic State”.
Meanwhile, the suspect’s recent trip to the southern Philippines, known to be home to ISIS-linked groups, has fueled more speculation about their ties to the militant group.
Clarke, who heads the New York security think-tank Soufan Center, says that one of theTwo gunmen shoot his weapon, as seen in the videos of the attack, it is clear that he had training.
“This guy was no amateur,” he said.
However, the slain suspect, Sajid Akram, was a licensed gun owner and belonged to a gun club, police said.
Clarke says the ISIS flags, along with the discovery of the IED, “are all the hallmarks of a classic ISIS attack.”
Australia’s prime minister said the mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach appeared to be motivated by the ideology of ISIS. Meanwhile, mourners flocked to the site to lay flowers and mourn the slain people, including a 10-year-old child.
Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the random attacks ISIS has launched in the past make it “100 percent likely” that the group is involved.
“The fact that the flags were found in their car, that almost becomes a moot point. I mean, it’s clear that they’ve placed that violence within the framework of ISIS.”
“The question is, how closely were they connected to ISIS?” he said. “Was this a command and control operation??” — meaning, did the attackers act on direct orders from the group?
But the bigger question, he says, is how and when they were radicalized.
Philippine immigration officials say both traveled to Manila and on to Davao in the south of the country on November 1 and left on November 28, just weeks before the Bondi shooting. But they said that none of this was conclusive that they were connected to a terrorist group or received training in the country.
Muslim separatist militant groups, including Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, have once expressed support for Islamic State and have hosted small numbers of foreign militant fighters from Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past.
Decades of military offensives, however, have significantly weakened the Abu Sayyaf and other such groups, and Philippine military and police officials say there have been no recent signs of foreign militants in the country’s south.
Both Hoffman and Clark agree that ISIS-affiliated branches in Southeast Asia have been significantly weakened over the years.
Yet the remnants are still powerful enough to provide individuals and small cells with the training and logistical support needed to carry out deadly terrorist attacks, Clarke says.
“I think that’s what we’re looking at here,” he said. “The Filipinos have done a good job of eliminating a lot of that threat, but again, it’s not completely (reduced.)”
‘Fingerprints could be everywhere’
Clarke says ISIS could haI helped train atarget selection.
“They could have helped pick the Hanukkah event on the beach. They could have gotten (the suspects) to consider making IEDs. They could have told them to put up homemade ISIS flags. We just don’t know.”
“Their fingerprints could band after all this.”
Clarke, who studies and monitors ISIS, says this potential connections are a reminder that ISIS, walthough a weakened force, it still poses a threat.
“This threat is still in play,” he said. “They’ve gone back to old-school terrorism, classic terrorism, guerrilla tactics. They can still go to a public place in the West and kill civilians, whether they inspire people to do it on their behalf, or they train and send people themselves.”
In recent years, ISIS-affiliated groups have launched a series of deadly attacks. Hoffman says ISIS likes to attack in “unexpected places” which include Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday 2019, attacks in Iran, Istanbul and Moscow in 2024 and an attack on New Orleans in January 2025.
He says ISIS hasn’t stopped, even though Western powers have weakened it ddestroying its governing capacity in Iraq and Syria and destroying its caliphate in 2019.
“They may be down, but they’re not out and still interested in carrying out attacks.”
