Discovery of explosives-filled trailer near Sydney averted mass casualty event — police
Police say public revelations about vehicle, believed to have been intended to blow up synagogue, compromised ongoing probe into series of antisemitic attacks in Australia

The discovery on Wednesday of a trailer full of explosives likely intended to blow up a synagogue in Sydney, Australia, may have prevented a “mass casualty event,” New South Wales police officials said Thursday, while adding that reports on the matter had potentially compromised a police investigation into a string of antisemitic attacks.
Several people “around the periphery” of the planned attack have been arrested since the caravan packed full of explosives was discovered, police said, adding that the owner was already under custody for a separate antisemitic attack. However, no arrests directly linked to the incident have been made.
According to police, there is increasing evidence that the continued wave of attacks on Australia’s Jewish community is being “orchestrated” from above.
On Wednesday, after reports began appearing in the Australian press, NSW police confirmed that they had found a trailer containing explosives in the Sydney suburb of Dural on January 19. There was “some indication” that the explosives discovered were intended to blow up a synagogue, they said.
On Thursday, investigators clarified that the trailer contained Powergel explosives stolen from a mining site, powerful enough to create a 40-meter blast wave that could trigger a “mass casualty event.”
Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson reported Thursday that the explosives were intended for Sydney’s Great Synagogue and the Sydney Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst. Police have not confirmed this.
Jewish community leaders charged that police were not doing enough to solve the case, and insisted that they shouldn’t have been kept in the dark about the incident.

“Until we know who the puppet masters are, and what their motives are, it’s impossible to point the finger with any degree of certainty about who’s responsible,” said Peter Wertheim, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb responded by saying the incident was being investigated quietly, and that further public revelations of details to the media would make it more difficult to solve the case.
“The fact that this information is now in the public domain has compromised our investigation, and it’s been detrimental to some of the strategies we may have used,” Webb said.
Webb stressed that the threat had been “mitigated very early on,” so there was no pressing need for the incident to be shared publicly.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson added that police had found indications of bad actors coordinating the attacks above the level of those perpetrating the attacks.
Regarding the individuals detained in connection with the caravan, he said police had not identified any “specific ideology that would cause them to commit the acts that they’ve committed, and that indicates to us that they are being orchestrated in some manner.”

Three separate incidents of anti-Jewish graffiti were also reported in Australia Wednesday night, including antisemitic slurs painted on the wall of Jewish school Mount Sinai College at Maroubra.
Australia has seen a surge in antisemitic actions since the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
The number of anti-Jewish incidents in Australia quadrupled in the year after the terror assault in southern Israel, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
These have included several arson attacks on synagogues and community centers in Sydney and Melbourne and the repeated spraying of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti on properties or vehicles in areas with large Jewish populations. Last month also saw a neo-Nazi rally by the Melbourne parliament.
In December 2024, New South Wales launched Strike Force Pearl, whose team includes counter-terrorism and special tactics officers, to investigate antisemitic hate crimes in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, following an arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue.
Australia’s federal police also launched Operation Avalite to investigate the surge in antisemitic crimes that has followed the Hamas attack in Israel.
Last week, Australian police revealed for the first time that they believe the ongoing scourge of antisemitic attacks in the country may be coordinated by foreign actors.