The
knife attack
carried out on Monday night by a teenager in a
Christian church in Sydney
, in which a priest and several parishioners were injured, was "a terrorist act", according to Australian Police sources declared on Tuesday.
"After considering all the material, I declared it
was a terrorist incident
," New South Wales state police commissioner Karen Webb said at a press conference. In parallel, she specified that it was
an act of "extremism" with religious motivations
and that the victims "are lucky to be alive."
The police chief added that the attacker went "with a certain degree of premeditation" to the Assyrian Church of the Good Shepherd in the Wakeley district, about 30 kilometers southwest of central Sydney, to carry out this knife attack.
Webb also clarified that
the attacker, an unidentified 16-year-old
, was not on any terrorist watch list.
Later, Mike Burgess, head of the Australian domestic intelligence agency (ASIO), stated that the suspect appears to have acted on his own and that
there is no reason to raise the terrorist threat level
. "At this point it appears that these were the actions of one individual," he said.
He also declared today at a press conference in Canberra that authorities in his country will investigate whether the attacker had connections with other extremists.
"At this time, we have no indication of this. But it is prudent that we do so to determine that there are no immediate threats or dangers to security," said Burgess, along with Australian Prime Minister
Anthony Albanese
, who stressed that this attack is " disturbing" and that in his country there is no place "for extremist violence.
According to Australian public broadcaster
ABC
, the teenager, who also suffered finger injuries, was free on bail until his last court appearance last January for good behavior after being charged with a series of offences, including possession of a knife, following an incident at a train station in Sydney last November.
What was the attack on the Sydney church like?
The attack, which occurred around 7:00 p.m. local time (9:00 GMT) on Monday at the Assyrian Church of the Good Shepherd in the Wakeley district, was carried out while
the religious ceremony was broadcast live
on social media.
In the video you can see how this teenager dressed in black approaches the altar where
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel
- 53 years old and a member of an ultra-conservative sect of the Assyrian Orthodox Church that has criticized Islam in public sermons published on the networks - was giving his sermon.
There, the young man appears stabbing the bishop repeatedly, even when he was on the ground, in an incident in which the priest Isaac Royel and other parishioners who helped the religious and arrested the aggressor were injured.
The New South Wales Police Commissioner explained this morning that the bishop and the priest, who suffered lacerations to the head and the other to the shoulder, "are lucky to be alive", reducing the number of seriously injured people. four to two that were initially calculated.
Riots with injuries and property damage
As a result of the incident, riots have occurred
around the church
, located in a multicultural community in the southwest of Sydney, between the authorities and hundreds of residents who asked that the person responsible for the attack be handed over to them, as seen in a video published on social networks. .
These riots left several officers injured, as well as damage to neighborhood property and police vehicles. This stabbing occurs about 48 hours after another stabbing incident in a shopping center in the Australian city, which left seven dead - including the attacker.
The Police ruled out that Saturday's attack was terrorist and investigated this Monday if it was due to a femicide.
Australia - where the majority of attacks have been carried out by jihadists armed with knives or firearms in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney - lowered the terrorist alert in 2022 from "probable", a level that had been in effect since 2014, to "possible" (fourth to third highest level on a scale of five).
Multiple murder in a Sydney shopping center
At least six people were stabbed to death and others were injured last Saturday in a Sydney shopping center. Among the fatalities was a 9-month-old baby.
The attacker walked through the popular Westfield Bondi Junction shopping center in eastern Australia, threatening anyone who crossed his path until a policewoman confronted him and shot him dead. Authorities were investigating whether it was a terrorist attack.
The aggressor, about 40 years old, entered the shopping center at 3:10 p.m. local time - around dawn in Argentina - left shortly after and returned about ten minutes later when he confronted several people who were walking through the place.
"Six people were fatally stabbed and one man was killed," the New South Wales Police said in a statement. Five of them died instantly, while the remaining one died while she was being treated at a hospital.
With information from EFE and AFP.
IS