SYDNEY—Arsen Ostrovsky’s wife and two young daughters were getting ready for the lighting of Hanukkah candles at Sydney’s scenic Bondi Beach on Sunday evening when Ostrovsky wandered off to get some food from a nearby stall.
Then, at around 6:45 p.m., shots rang out.
Ostrovsky immediately turned back to rush to his family. But “there was such chaos,” he said, with bodies falling everywhere in a hail of bullets. He got hit, and went down, too.
Wounded, Ostrovsky desperately tried calling his wife to check on her and their two daughters, ages 4 and 8, but was unable to get through. For the next 15 minutes, he was unsure of their fates.
The carnage that unfolded at one of Sydney’s most iconic locations was unlike anything the country had seen in decades. A local man, identified by authorities as Ahmed el Ahmed, helped end it when he rushed one of the two assailants and wrestled the man’s weapon away.
Police ultimately shot and killed that shooter. The other suspect was wounded and taken to a hospital under police guard. Officials haven’t named the suspects.
The violence stunned a country that has strict firearms regulations and had low gun crime in recent decades.
For Australian Jews, it was confirmation of what many believe has been a rising tide of antisemitism since the most recent Israel-Hamas war began, including a 2024 firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was clear the gunmen were targeting the Jewish event as an act of antisemitism, and that it was driven by ideology that is an “extreme perversion of Islam.” Among those killed were a Holocaust survivor who attended with his children and several prominent members of the local Jewish community, according to the Jewish organization Chabad. Around 27 victims remained in hospitals on Monday, according to authorities.
The bloodshed has renewed calls for Australia’s government to do more to fight antisemitism and spurred a new push from lawmakers to further tighten gun rules.
“The country has changed very significantly in the last two years,” said Robert Goot, deputy president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. “One would hope that it can revert to what it once was.”
Sunday was supposed to be a day of celebration. Bondi Beach was buzzing with tourists, craft markets and beachgoers on a warm Australian summer day. The Hanukkah festival, which advertised free doughnuts, face painting and grab-n-go menorah kits, was in full swing, with more than 1,000 people in attendance.
Kobi Farkash, an Israeli tourist, said he was waiting for the lighting of the menorah for the first night of Hanukkah when he heard a sound that he thought was a firework.
People started running. Farkash saw someone on the ground with blood. Realizing it was an attack, he took off running too. As he ran, he said he heard about 40 shots over the next couple of minutes, until he was too far away to hear any more.
“It’s very sad to know that [antisemitism] is all around the world,” he said. “I didn’t even imagine this can come to Sydney.”
Footage from the scene showed the two gunmen firing from a pedestrian bridge near the beach.
As people scattered, lifeguards from two nearby beach clubs—including some that were attending a Christmas party— rushed into the area, said Steve Pearce, the chief executive of Surf Life Saving NSW. They evacuated children from the playground and started carrying out CPR on victims, even while the shooting was ongoing, Pearce said.
At one stage, lifeguards brought four gunshot victims into one of the clubs. Some people died in the lifeguards’ arms, Pearce said.
“By the time it was finished, there wasn’t one bandage left in either of the clubs,” he said. “There wasn’t one oxygen cylinder left.”
Sorella Abrahams, who was at the festival with her family, fled to one of the clubs after the shooting began. At one point, a rumor circulated that a terrorist was inside, and everyone started screaming.
When the shooting started, Abrahams said she wasn’t with her two oldest children, who were elsewhere in the festival. She’s still not sure how they found each other in the mayhem.
“Honestly I see it as a miracle from God,” she said. “My oldest son said he saw a bullet land right before his feet and then explode. And my youngest son said he felt bullets fly over his head.”
Tessa Gnesin had just arrived at the festival with her husband when they both went to check out the food and heard the shots. She and her husband hid under a counter in a doughnut tent, lying flat on the grass. During the gunbattle, Gnesin felt the ground near her move, and she thought that a bullet had hit close by.
“We were just sitting ducks,” she said. “We were just waiting for the slaughter.”
Gnesin’s view was obscured, but another man kept yelling that the shooters were on the bridge, she recalled. A grandmother in the tent shielded a baby. Her husband told her that he was able to see bodies.
At one point, one of the gunmen left the bridge and aimed his weapon. From behind, a bystander—the man Australian officials identified as Ahmed—bear-tackled the assailant, put him in a headlock and stripped his gun from him. The assailant could then be seen backing away.
Albanese later said Ahmed was being treated for unspecified injuries at a local hospital.
When the shooting finally stopped, Gnesin and her husband were able to leave. At home later, they lit Hanukkah candles.
“We are proud Jews,” she said. “No one is going to chase us away.”
For Ostrovsky, the man who had left his wife and two daughters to get food, everything seemed to be fine when they arrived a little after 5.30 p.m. and saw bubbles and a petting zoo.
“The kids were having a fantastic time,” he said.
Ostrovsky, a 45-year-old human-rights lawyer, had just moved back to Australia—where he grew up—from Israel roughly two weeks earlier. He moved to lead the Sydney office of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, a group that aims to combat antisemitism.
Once the shooting started, a bullet grazed Ostrovsky’s head, and he went down. In the distance, he could see a gunman on the bridge firing bullets randomly. “Literally like bang, bang, bang and then reloading,” he said.
Unable to get through by phone to his wife, Tzeira, he managed to take a photo of himself and sent it to her. “I said ‘I love you,’ and I didn’t know if it was going to be the last time.”
He also saw an elderly pair nearby. Noticing that Ostrovsky was bleeding profusely, the man gave him his shirt to use for compression. “It was like triage in a war zone, except it was on Bondi Beach,” Ostrovsky said.
Finally, after roughly 15 excruciating minutes, Ostrovsky got a message back from his wife. She and the girls were all right. She had covered them during the attack before managing to escape and contacting Ostrovsky’s parents.
“This was the most petrifying part, not being able to be there to shield your kids and know if they were safe,” he said. “For me, my wife is an absolute lioness.”
Speaking from a hospital Monday, he said that he had lost a lot of blood and that doctors would likely still need to operate. But he said he expects to make a full recovery.
“Doctors said it was millimeters between life and death, and a miracle I made it.”
Write to Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com, Rhiannon Hoyle at rhiannon.hoyle@wsj.com and Stuart Condie at stuart.condie@wsj.com