Australia to hold national day of mourning for victims of Bondi Hanukkah massacre

As flags fly at half mast, millions of Australians are being asked to observe a minute’s silence and light candles; PM Albanese to attend memorial at Sydney’s Opera House

By AFP and ToI Staff 21 January 2026, 7:46 pm

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The Sydney Opera House is illuminated with candlelights in Sydney, Australia, on December 21, 2025, as part of a national day of reflection honoring the victims of the Bondi Beach terror attack targeting the Jewish community one week earlier. (Saeed KHAN / AFP)

SYDNEY, Australia — Australians will light candles and fall silent on Thursday, marking a national day of mourning for the 15 people killed by gunmen who opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah event last month at Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach.

As flags fly at half-mast, millions are being asked to observe a minute of silence at 7:01 p.m. Sydney time for victims of the December 14 mass shooting, Australia’s deadliest in three decades.

Candles will be lit in windows and on doorsteps around the country.

Survivors, families, emergency responders, and community leaders are to join in an evening of collective mourning for those killed, titled “Light Will Win,” at Sydney’s Opera House.

Sajid Akram and his son Naveed targeted Jews attending the Hanukkah event in an ISIS-inspired attack, the nation’s worst mass shooting in 30 years and the worst antisemitic attack outside Israel in decades. Sajid was killed by police during the attack; Naveed was shot but survived.

Among the victims were an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, a couple who confronted one of the gunmen, and a 10-year-old girl, Matilda, described at her funeral as a “ray of sunshine.”

Mourners gather in front of tributes laid in memory of victims of the mass shooting at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, on December 20, 2025. (DAVID GRAY / AFP)

Despite the dangers of that day, first responders raced to treat the wounded; strangers sheltered each other from gunfire; and shop owner Ahmed al Ahmed famously wrested a gun from one of the attackers.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is to address the Opera House event, has been criticized for foot-dragging in combating antisemitism ahead of the attack.

Since the shooting, he has agreed to establish a high-level royal commission inquiry, which is to include examinations of the security services’ actions and rising reports of antisemitism.

This week, his left-leaning Labor government ushered through parliament new laws that seek to tighten gun control and crack down on crimes of hate speech and radicalization. The legislation stiffens sentences, sets up a framework for listing prohibited hate groups, and makes it easier to reject or cancel visas for suspects.

Australian and Aboriginal flags fly at half-mast on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a National Day of Reflection to honor the victims of a terrorist attack targeting a Jewish event a week earlier, at Bondi Beach, December 21, 2025. (AP/Mark Baker)

On firearms, Australia will set up a national gun buyback scheme, tighten rules on imports of the weapons, and expand background checks for gun permits to allow input from the intelligence services.

Regarding the royal commission, Albanese appointed former High Court judge Virginia Bell to lead the inquiry, and a report is due by December 14, which will be a year to the day since the shooting.

Australia’s 120,000-strong Jewish community has long complained that Albanese has not done enough to protect them from rising antisemitism following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and that his critical position on Israel has emboldened pro-Palestinian activists to target Jewish institutions. Albanese’s occasional statements of support for the community after the many attacks on Jews in the past two years have frequently been met with cynicism.

Floral tributes are laid for victims on a small bridge where gunmen had stood during a mass terror shooting targeting a Hanukkah event nearly a week earlier, at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, on December 20, 2025. (DAVID GRAY / AFP)

Many in Australia’s Jewish community say the government, and Albanese in particular, “abandoned” them, arguing that clear warning signs were ignored in the lead-up to the Bondi massacre.

Since 2023, the country has seen successive marches and protests that have included antisemitic rhetoric, as well as attacks on synagogues, schools, and homes. In one instance, two nurses threatened to kill Jewish patients at their hospital. In another, law enforcement discovered a trailer filled with explosives, said to have been intended to cause a mass-casualty event at a Sydney synagogue.