Sydney Shooter Went To Philippines On Indian Passport, Last Visited Hyderabad In 2022

16th December 2025 at 4:54 PM

1 minute read

Investigators are trying to probe if the two shooters behind the Sydney Bondi Beach carnage met extremist Islamic preachers and received military-style training as they travelled to the Philippines last month.

Sydney : Investigators are trying to probe if the two shooters behind the Sydney Bondi Beach carnage met extremist Islamic preachers and received military-style training as they travelled to the Philippines last month. Sajid Akram (50) and his son Naveed Akram (24) targeted Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Australia, killing 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old man who survived Hitler’s Holocaust.

While Sajid (50) was shot dead by police, Naveed (24) was critically injured when security forces retaliated. Bloomberg news agency quoted a spokesman for the Manila’s Bureau of Immigration to report that Sajid Akram travelled from Australia to the Philippines on an Indian passport last month. Reuters too reported, citing officials, that “the father travelled on an Indian passport, while the son was on an Australian passport.

The Philippines, especially its south, has been the hub of extremist clerics and Islamist terrorist groups. Several armed Islamist outfits there have owed their allegiance to the IS. The father-son duo travelled to the Philippines to receive “military-style training”, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). They reached the Philippines in early November. Naveed and Sajid Akram then journeyed to the southern Philippines and underwent militant training,” a senior counter-terrorism official told the ABC, on condition of anonymity.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Bondi Beach attack was driven by “Islamic State ideology”. Police recovered two homemade IS flags apart from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from a vehicle registered in Naveed’s name from near the beach soon after the attack. Naveed, who was born in Australia, had come under the scanner of Australian security agencies for suspected IS ties in 2019, but was reportedly let off unmonitored.

The pair fired upon hundreds of people at a Jewish Hannukah festival being held at Bondi Beach, forcing people to flee and take shelter amid the carnage. The attack began just before 7 pm (local time), with shooters firing from a bridge for 20 minutes, and even reloading multiple times. Twenty minutes [later], there were four policemen.