It was the kind of Sunday afternoon treasured by Sydneysiders who call Bondi Beach: groups of friends lying on the sand, surfers in soaked wetsuits returning to land, children Laughing people laugh against the backdrop of soft crashing waves.

In a grassy park, with a playground at one end of the beach, a long-standing tradition was underway: the annual seaside Hanukkah celebration, where hundreds of people, from toddlers to grandparents, enjoyed the first night of the festival of lights with music, face painting, a large menorah and a barbecue.

Around 6:30 p.m. m., a grayish hatchback stopped nearby. Two figures dressed in dark T-shirts stepped out of the vehicle. They carried long-barreled weapons and took position on an elevated walkway overlooking the celebration. A series of rapid explosions sounded that some recognized as gunshots. But many others thought it must be fireworks; When it came to Bondi Beach and Australia, the alternative was unthinkable.

In a matter of seconds, realizing that they were under a hail of bullets, panic broke out. A young mother grabbed her 17-month-old baby and dove under a metal grill. Another woman pushed aside plastic chairs and pushed her 26-year-old daughter and her octogenarian mother to the ground.

“He wouldn't stop,” said another woman who was at the event, who gave her name only as Pearl. “We were totally exposed in that small space. We were easy prey.”

Across the street, Kaitlin Davidson, a 28-year-old nurse, saw the two attackers on the bridge directly from the window of her ground-floor apartment.

“They kept reloading,” she said. “They had an insane amount of ammunition and several weapons.”

On Monday, authorities said the two attackers were a father. and his son, aged 50 and 24. Police searched two homes linked to the men, but it remained unclear how and why they carried out the worst mass shooting in Australia in almost three decades. What was evident was that their intention had been to attack Jews, a community already in suspense over the alarming rise in anti-Semitic episodes in Australia.

The younger man had been on authorities' radar since 2019, but there were “no indications of a current threat or that he would get involved in acts of violence,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Monday.

When it was all over, 14 people had died at the scene, including the oldest attacker. Two other victims, including a 10-year-old girl, who had been taken to hospitals, died there, police said Monday.

The nearly 10 minutes of dozens of gunshots transformed the nearly kilometer-long stretch of Bondi Beach into a scene straight out of a disaster movie: crowds of beachgoers, tourists and passers-by fled and ran in all directions, jumping cars and climbing concrete walls, leaving behind sandals, phones, bags and lots of colorful beach towels.

Some agents who arrived within minutes began shooting at the attackers, but, according to a witness, their guns seemed clearly outmatched by the firearms carried by the attackers. shooters.

Benjamin Holzman, 42, who was at the event with his wife and 5-year-old daughter, said the police gunshots sounded like small pops, compared to the detonation of the attackers' weapons, which he said “almost sounded like a missile.” Police did not specify what weapons were used in Sunday's shooting, but said the older suspect was a legal gun owner and had six legally registered firearms.

Holtzman said his family hid behind a pole about a foot wide. Nearby, he said, another father tried to comfort his young son by telling him a story in a low voice.

At one point, one of the shooters came down from the bridge and approached even closer to the event. He was near a row of parked cars when a passer-by, later identified as Ahmed el Ahmed, ran up to him, tackled him and disarmed him. The attacker retreated to the pedestrian bridge.

There, finally, both shooters seemed to fall to the ground. When the shooting stopped, Davidson ran across the street to help, identifying herself as a nurse. On one side of the bridge, he saw a female police officer who had been shot in her bulletproof vest. Davidson removed the officer's vest and verified that she was not seriously injured. Then someone led her to the other side, where she saw what the attackers had been shooting at.

“It was a war zone,” Davidson said.

There were people who were shot in the legs, buttocks and shoulders. Others had been shot in the back, apparently while fleeing, he said.

Across a narrow path separating the site from the playground, dozens of lifeguards who had gathered for their water rescue club's annual Christmas party watched the situation.

“It sounded like it was happening all around us. There was a huge sense of fear," recalled Ben Ferguson, a volunteer lifeguard. Someone at the club yelled, "Oh my God, he's reloading," he said.

Almost as soon as the shooting stopped, before it was known where the attackers were, a lifeguard with military training ran out to take the children to safety inside the club, Ferguson said.

Looking out the window and seeing people still exposed on the grass, Ferguson said he was overcome with “an enormous sense of guilt,” and he and others ran outside to help. tourniquets.

“The first 15 minutes were a blast,” Ferguson said. He said the water rescue community attracts naturally empathetic people, and everyone felt compelled to help.

David Smith, 25, a volunteer with Community Health Support, a Jewish organization that provides assistance to people with medical needs, was sent by the group to the scene of the shooting.

He went from patient to patient, assessing their wounds and Sorting them according to priority for medical care (red for the most urgent cases, which included more than 20 victims). People were screaming, and children were looking for their parents, he recalled, while some of the wounded screamed, exclaiming that they had done nothing to deserve this.

Because of the tight-knit bondi Jewish community, Smith knew three of the dead and three of the wounded who were still in hospital, he said. The tragedy was all the more surreal because that picturesque beach had been the scene of his daily life, he said.

“This is my morning run, this is my afternoon swim,” he said.

For hours, a makeshift team of paramedics, police, first responders and dozens of others who ran toward the scene rather than away from it worked to stabilize the victims and transport them to ambulances. A group of bloody rescue boards remained all night in the center of the park, now cordoned off as a crime scene.

On Monday morning, groups of residents descended on the beach still trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.

Yvonne Haber, an architect who has lived in Bondi for three decades, said the attack was all the more painful because the beach has been at the heart of Sydney's Jewish community since the first refugees who Those fleeing the Holocaust settled there after World War II.

“Bondi has often been a place where Jews gather to form a close-knit community,” said Haber, 62. “This is our worst nightmare.”

Victoria Kim is a correspondent for The New York Times in Australia, based in Sydney. She covers Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific region.

Livia Albeck-Ripka is a Times reporter covering California, breaking news and other topics from Los Angeles.