By Emily Clark, Mark Doman and Alex Palmer, ABC News
Two men stand on a pedestrian bridge and open fire on families and crowds gathered in the areas below.
This was the scene that unfolded on Sunday evening at Bondi Beach.
Videos and witness accounts from the terrorist attack have been shared widely and shed light on how events unfolded.
Witnesses who were in the North Bondi area told ABC News that early on Sunday evening they heard several loud bangs before seeing people around them injured and bleeding.
Further towards the south end of the beach, witness Marley Carroll said he heard two loud bangs before "a rush of people" ran towards him.
"They were running away from the shooter to us," he said.
Photo: ABC News
"That's when we realised everyone around us was just running and people were running on the roads, car horns going off, people were crying and I recall a group of girls running past us saying, 'He's shooting people, he's shooting people.'"
Police said they started to receive reports of shots being fired at an area called Archer Park in Bondi Beach at 6.47pm local time.
Around the same time, mobile phones in Sydney's east started to light up as friends and family urgently asked one another: "Are you in Bondi?"
In the popular Facebook group Bondi Local Loop, where more than 150,000 members post about beach parties and selling pot plants, desperate messages started to emerge: "What on Earth is going on at the beach?"
Photo: ABC News
Then videos started to circulate among locals.
In footage that has now been independently verified by the ABC, two men can be seen standing on the cement pedestrian bridge at the northern end of the beach, firing towards crowds.
There are several angles of the attack from the footbridge, including from a drone that was overhead at the time.
On a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer, Bondi Beach is incredibly beautiful and incredibly popular. At the northern end, crowds settle in for sunset on the beach, in the park and on the hill that provides a view of it all.
There is an area often used for festivals and events, as well as a children's playground.
To get to the northern end of the world-famous beach, pedestrians can cross a cement bridge that moves them from the main street that runs the length of the beach, Campbell Parade, over car parks to the grassy areas, the sand and eventually the sea.
This is a path well trodden by Bondi Beach goers.
But on Sunday afternoon, two men stood on that footbridge with firearms and killed multiple people and injured dozens more.
In the area in front of them, a Jewish festival was being held. The Chanukah by the Sea event was reportedly attended by families, and officials have said at least one child has been injured.
Sunday is the first day of Chanukah, or Hanukkah, an eight-day Jewish festival of lights.
Photo: ABC News
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the shooting was a "targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah".
In the area under the footbridge were parked cars where the ABC understands people were taking shelter.
A video shows that sometime before 7:30pm one of the gunmen had moved off the bridge onto the footpath level and was rushed by a member of the public.
In the footage, a man can be seen creeping up behind the gunman, before grabbing the firearm and turning it on the attacker.
This man has been hailed a hero, single-handedly disarming one of the gunmen and putting himself in harm's way to do it.
Photo: ABC News
By 7.30pm, a video of two men lying face down on the footbridge was shared among locals.
In the video, the men are not moving and police are attempting to handcuff them as locals film the scene and scream at the gunmen who have just devastated a community and a city.
There has been a mammoth response in Bondi, with locals, tourists and lifeguards tending to the injured. Locals have offered those stuck in the area their living rooms to sit and wait and talk.
Bondi Lifeguards posted on social media saying that while the terrorist attack was underway, they were still rescuing people from the waves out at sea.
Dozens of police and ambulance units responded, with a massive operation underway for hours after the shooting stopped.
- ABC
