Five people have been killed in a mass stabbing at a busy shopping center in Sydney, Australian police said.Police were called to Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon local time following reports of multiple people stabbed, reports CNN.The suspect - who police said acted alone - was shot dead at the scene by a lone officer.New South Wales Police’s Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said that the attacker raised his knife at her and “she discharged her firearm, and that person is now deceased.”No information has been given as to his identity or a possible motive but Cooke said they were “not ruling anything out.”After warning people to stay away from the area police say the incident is now over.Eight patients, including one child, have been transported to hospitals across Sydney, NSW Ambulance service confirmed to CNN. They would not say if the injured people were men or women or what their current conditions were.
Videos shared on social media show shoppers running from multiple exits of the shopping center, while police helicopters can be heard overhead.
CNN’s Australian affiliate, 9 News Sydney, spoke to an eyewitness who said people were running through the shopping center and falling over each other, describing the situation as “pandemonium.”
Channel 9 was told that people started running and shouting: “Do not go down, there has been a stabbing, there has been a stabbing.”
Two male eyewitnesses told 9 News they saw a baby and mother stabbed. “The baby got stabbed and the mum got stabbed.”
“We were holding the baby and trying to compress the baby. Same with the mother, trying to compress the blood from stopping.”
The news outlet also showed live video of people being put into ambulances and treated at the scene.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albenese said he had been briefed on the “devastating events” at Bondi Junction.
“Tragically, multiple casualties have been reported and the first thoughts of all Australians are with those affected and their loved ones,” he wrote on X.
Mass casualty events are rare in Australia. At least four people were killed and one injured in a mass shooting in Darwin, northern Australia in 2019.
April 1996 saw a mass shooting which became known as the Port Arthur massacre - the deadliest in Australia’s modern history - when 35 people were killed in the tourist town in the state of Tasmania.