Witnesses describe ‘absolute bloodbath’ in Bondi Hanukkah attack

Arsen Ostrovsky moved back to Australia from Israel two weeks ago to helm the Sydney office of AIJAC, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. On Sunday, he was one of scores of people shot during an attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. At least 11 people were killed, as well as one of the attackers. Ostrovsky, who grew up in Sydney after leaving the Soviet Union as a child, was injured in the head and treated at the scene.

“It was actually chaos. We didn’t know what was happening, where the gunfire was coming from. I saw blood gushing from me. I saw people hit, saw people fall to the ground,” he told a local news station, his head bandaged with blood visible on his face and clothing. “My only concern was, where are my kids? Where are my kids? Where’s my wife, where’s my family?” He said he had been briefly separated from his family before finding them safe“ I saw children falling to the floor, I saw elderly, I saw invalids,” he said. “It was an absolute bloodbath, blood gushing everywhere.”

The attack struck at a centerpiece of Jewish community in Sydney, home to an estimated 40,000 Jews, nearly half of Australia’s total Jewish population. At least 1,000 people had turned up for the beachside celebration on the first night of Hanukkah. “There were people dead everywhere, young, old, rabbi - they’re all dead,” Vlad, a Jewish chaplain with the State Emergency Service, told a local TV station. “And then two people died while we’re trying to save them, because the ambulance didn’t arrive on time.” (Read More)