Australia PM: Beach attackers 'motivated by extremism'
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Australia mourn the victims of a shooting, during a Jewish holiday gathering at Bondi Beach, its prime minister pledges solidarity.
Anthony Albanese says the attackers were not part of a terror cell, but "clearly, they were motivated by this extremist ideology". The father of a Syrian bystander who was filmed wrestling a gun off an attacker has told the BBC he was driven by "conscience and humanity"
Also in the programme: Ukraine's President Zelensky comes under more pressure to compromise at peace talks in Berlin, Chile elects a far-right leader who is an admirer of the dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and police in Los Angeles investigate the suspected murder of the celebrated Hollywood director, Rob Reiner.
(Photo shows Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference in Sydney, Australia on 15 December 2025. Credit: Steven Markham/EPA)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello, welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.8 | We're coming to you live from London. I'm Paul Henley. |
| 0:16.3 | First, the Australian authorities say neither the father nor the son believed to have opened fire |
| 0:21.6 | at people celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in Sydney was part of a wider extremist cell. |
| 0:28.4 | It's emerged that one of the gunmen who killed at least 15 people at that event |
| 0:32.7 | yesterday had earlier been investigated over links to the Islamic State terrorist group. |
| 0:38.8 | This was the scene of the attack at Bondi Beach. |
| 0:48.9 | The youngest victim was a 10-year-old girl. |
| 0:52.1 | These eyewitnesses recount what happened. |
| 0:55.1 | I look two men, mini sniper, he said in the poor white, and boom, bum, bam, |
| 1:02.3 | everything, every the man, boom, bomb. We ran into behind the kitchen and we were just hiding |
| 1:08.1 | in a room and there were lots of children there. Their parents |
| 1:12.5 | weren't there because this was a kid's party basically and lots of kids crying. I seen like a kid |
| 1:17.7 | like she was like maybe eight years old. She got injured in the leg and she was crying and she was |
| 1:23.0 | on the ground. So many kids from my kindergarten were there. I don't know. I'm desperate. I don't know. Are they alive or not? |
| 1:30.9 | My grandchildren were there. |
| 1:33.4 | I get so emotional. I start to cry. I can't control my emotional. I'm so sorry for death. |
| 1:42.0 | For passing life for no reason. |
| 1:44.9 | The police have since raided a property outside Sydney |
| 1:47.8 | where the gunmen are believed to have prepared the attack. |
| 1:51.0 | Addressing the nation today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese |
... |
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