Australian police said the attack on the priest at the Sydney church was a “terrorist” act.

He knife attack committed Monday night by a teenager in a Christian church in Sydneyin which a priest and several parishioners were injured, it was “a terrorist act”, Australian police sources said on Tuesday.

“After considering all the material, I declared it It was a terrorist incident“said the police commissioner of the state of New South Wales, Karen Webb, in a press conference. At the same time, 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 traveled “with a degree of premeditation” to the Assyrian Church of the Good Shepherd in the Wakeley district, about 30 kilometers south-west of Sydney’s city centre, to carry out this attack with knife.

Webb also clarified this the attacker, a 16-year-old teenager who was not identifiedhe was not on any terrorist watch list.

Subsequently, Mike Burgess, head of the Australian Domestic Intelligence Agency (ASIO), said that the suspect appears to have acted on his own initiative and that there is no reason to increase the terrorist threat level. “At this point it appears these were the actions of one individual,” she said.

He also told a press conference in Canberra today that authorities in his country would investigate whether the attacker had links to other extremists.

“We have no indication of that at the moment. But it is prudent to do so to check that there are no immediate threats or dangers to security,” Burgess said, alongside the Australian prime minister, Antonio Albanesewho underlined that this attack is “disturbing” and that in his country there is no place “for extremist violence”.

This was reported by the Australian public broadcaster ABCThe teenager, who also suffered injuries to his fingers, was on bail until his final court appearance in January for good behavior after being charged with a number of offences, including possession of a knife, following an incident occurred at a Sydney train station last November.

What was the Sydney church attack like?

The attack, which occurred on Monday around 7pm local time (9:00 GMT), at the Assyrian Church of the Good Shepherd in the Wakeley district, was carried out while The religious ceremony was broadcast live through 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 posted online – was giving his sermon.

There, the young man appears to have repeatedly stabbed the bishop, even when he was on the ground, in an incident in which priest Isaac Royel and other parishioners who had helped the cleric and arrested the attacker were injured.

The New South Wales Police Commissioner explained this morning that the bishop and the priest, who suffered lacerations to one’s head and the other to his shoulder, “are lucky to be alive”, reducing the number of injured to four. serious initially calculated.

Collisions with injuries and material damage

Following the accident, there were riots around the churchlocated in a multicultural community in Sydney’s south-west, among the authorities and hundreds of residents demanding that the person responsible for the attack be handed over to them, as seen in a video published on social networks.

These riots resulted in several officers being injured, as well as damage to neighborhood property and police vehicles. The stabbing comes about 48 hours after another stabbing at a shopping center in the Australian city, which left seven people dead, including the attacker.

Police ruled out that Saturday’s attack was terrorist in nature and on Monday investigated whether it was due to femicide.

Australia – where most of the attacks were carried out by jihadists armed with knives or firearms in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney – has lowered the terrorism alert in 2022 from “probable”, the level in force since 2014, to ” possible”. ” (fourth to third highest level on a scale of five).

Multiple murder in a Sydney shopping centre

At least six people were stabbed to death and others injured at a Sydney shopping center on Saturday. Among the victims 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 attacker, aged in his 40s, entered the shopping center at 3.10pm local time – around dawn in Argentina – left shortly after and returned about ten minutes later when he was confronted by several people crossing the street. place.

“Six people were stabbed to death and one man was killed,” NSW police said in a statement. Five of them died instantly, while the remainder died while in hospital.