How brave victims saved those around them

It was a perfect summer evening, very special for Sydney. The dusk was rosy, the ocean was sparkling, and the beach was full of surfers, swimmers, and sandcastles. There was a festive atmosphere at Bondi Beach as the city went into holiday mode. Street parties and picnics were held. On the lawn above the beach, the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, was celebrated with barbecues and balloons.

Josh Pulford listened to the party from his van in the Campbell Parade car park. There was music, chatter, and the chirping of kids enjoying the free donuts and goats at the zoo. Pulford then saw through the door of his van two men dressed mostly in black walking towards the concrete bridge about 15 meters away. They were carrying guns. “They walked up to the incident and opened fire,” he said.

In a matter of seconds, this cheerful afternoon turned into Sydney’s darkest day. The party was hit by many bullets, perhaps hundreds. They killed at least 11 people, injured many more, and traumatized an entire community. And they shattered Sydney’s innocence. We hoped and believed that such a thing could never happen here. He can, and he did it Sunday night.

Shortly after 6.30pm, two gunmen walked onto the footbridge over the beach car park behind Bondi Pavilion. They fired again and again. Bodies collapsed. One of the attackers remained on the bridge, while the second gunman walked towards the meeting. As he pointed his gun at the target, grocery store owner Ahmed al Ahmed in Sutherland Shire pulled the gun from his arms and attacked him from behind.

As gunshots echoed on the beach, a panicked conflict broke out. Some threw themselves under parked cars, their bodies covering their children. Some fled to strangers’ apartments or hid in restaurant bathrooms. An elderly couple took shelter in Pulford’s van. “It was pure carnage,” said one man who moved to Sydney after surviving a Hamas attack on Israel in 2023. “I saw children falling to the ground. I saw old people. I saw disabled people.”

Guests attending the bar mitzvah ceremony at Bondi Pavilion heard the gunshot. “All of a sudden kids started running and saying, ‘There’s gunshots, there’s gunshots,'” Jodi Benjamin said. “Then my own children dispersed. I lost them for 15 minutes. We all hid in a room in isolation.”

Swimming with her daughters, Sach Fernando ran south towards the Icebergs swimming pool. “I’m not kidding, it’s the fear in the police’s eyes,” he said. “We can say that they are afraid too.”

Vladimir Kotlyar, the Jewish chaplain of the State Emergency Service, was at the party with his son. When he saw the gunmen, he fell to the ground and covered his son with his body. The man next to him collapsed on top of them; he was also shot shoulder. Kotlyar helped as much as he could. He then staggered away in surprise when paramedics arrived. There was blood on his shirt and hands. “This is not the Australia I know,” he said.

After what seemed like an eternity, one of the gunmen was shot and the other was captured. The massacre was over in less than 10 minutes.

When the gunfire stopped, Pulford returned to his van, joining the panicked crowd running towards the surf club. He saw a massacre. The bodies were lying face down. Many could not be revived. He saw a man with a bullet wound in his arm walking away with his little daughter. Most of the victims appeared elderly; Maybe they couldn’t run as fast as the others. His voice was getting deeper as he spoke. “There were 15-16 bodies around,” he said.

Russell Port rushed to the scene from a nearby street party and was met with chaos. “There was no organization. Everyone was trying to do their best,” he said. “There were not enough resources for the horror of the situation. Ordinary people were helping, putting pressure on people’s chests. I was cutting people’s shirts. I was making bandages.

“There weren’t enough stretchers to get people to the ambulances. Surf lifeguards arrived. They were putting people on surfboards to carry them. An old woman was crying for someone close to her, [who] passed away. “He was wearing a sheet.”

A man who wanted to be known only as B was sunbathing on the beach when he heard gunshots. He ran to help and saw two young children, about five or six years old, cowering under a car. “They said, ‘My mother, my mother,’” he said. He pulled their mother out from under the car and realized she had been shot twice, once in the back of the neck and once in the shoulder. “I had to apply pressure for about 20 minutes,” he said. “Big wounds. I put my fingers in the hole. Then paramedics intervened. Forty-five minutes later the ambulance arrived.” The little girl gave him her father’s number before the volunteers took the children to the surf club, away from their bleeding mother.

A man knelt on his knees with his head in his hands. He knew some of the injured. “I was covering the bodies,” he said. International student Rahemat Pasha witnessed the shooting and helped the injured. “It was the first time I saw a person being killed in front of my eyes,” he said.

Sirens soon roared through the eastern suburbs; ambulances, police cars, Public Order and Riot Force trucks. Helicopters circled and one landed at a nearby sports oval to take the victims to hospital. Lifeguards washed the blood off the canoes.

There was a look of stunned disbelief on everyone’s face (victim, witness, paramedic, police officer). One of Australia’s most iconic beaches, loved for its beauty and as a symbol of freedom, was now tarnished by the trauma of terrorism.

Bondi terror attack given more coverage