{"id":16106,"date":"2025-12-22T06:14:59","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T17:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16106"},"modified":"2025-12-22T06:14:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T17:14:59","slug":"australia-falls-silent-lights-candles-for-bondi-beach-shooting-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16106","title":{"rendered":"Australia falls silent, lights candles for Bondi Beach shooting victims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australians fell silent in flickering candlelight Sunday to honour the Bondi Beach shooting victims, marking one week since gunmen fired into crowds at a Jewish festival.<\/p>\n<p>A father and son are accused of targeting the beachside Hanukkah celebration, killing 15 people including children and Holocaust survivors on one of the nation&#8217;s darkest days.<\/p>\n<p>From raucous city pubs to sleepy country towns, Australia observed a minute&#8217;s silence at 6.47pm local time &#8212; exactly a week since the first reports of gunfire.<\/p>\n<p>In a nation-wide gesture of &#8220;light over darkness&#8221;, countless homes lined their windowsills with candles.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re here together,&#8221; said Roslyn Fishall, a member of Sydney&#8217;s Jewish community.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Turn to strangers and hug them. Let&#8217;s make peace together,&#8221; she told AFP from a makeshift memorial at Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n<p>Summer winds buffeted flags dipped to half-mast across the country, including over the famed Sydney Harbour Bridge.<\/p>\n<p>A seaplane buzzed above Bondi Beach trailing a message of love for &#8220;our Jewish community&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s still really difficult to understand what&#8217;s been happening,&#8221; said Leona Pemberton at the Bondi memorial.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I guess the tears, they have to flow at some point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A generation of Australians has grown up with the reassuring notion that mass shootings simply do not happen in the country.<\/p>\n<p>That illusion was shattered when alleged gunmen Sajid Akram, 50, and his 24-year-old son Naveed trained their long-barrelled weapons on the nation&#8217;s most famous beach.<\/p>\n<p>The deadliest mass shooting in almost 30 years, the attack was so unthinkable that many shrugged off the first cracks of gunfire as harmless festive fireworks.<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australians fell silent in flickering candlelight Sunday to honour the Bondi Beach shooting victims, marking one week since gunmen fired into crowds at a Jewish festival. A father and son are accused of targeting the beachside Hanukkah celebration, killing 15 people including children and Holocaust survivors on one of the nation&#8217;s darkest days. From raucous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16108,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106\/revisions\/16108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}