Australian police yesterday said a brutal knife attack during a live-streamed church service was a religiously motivated “terrorist” act, as they urged calm from the angered local community.
Two people were stabbed when a 16-year-old suspect rushed the dais at an Assyrian Christian church in western Sydney late on Monday, slashing wildly at the bishop who was giving a sermon.
The bishop was stabbed in the head and chest and taken to a hospital. The attacker was immediately subdued by outraged congregants and later taken into police custody. He was “known to police,” but was not on any terror watchlists, senior officers said.
Photo: Reuters
“After consideration of all the material, I declared that it was a terrorist incident,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb told a news conference.
Webb said the attack was deemed an act of religiously motivated “extremism” that intimidated the public, adding that the victims were “lucky to be alive.”
The head of Australia’s leading spy agency said that the suspect appeared to have acted alone and there was no immediate need to raise the country’s terror threat level.
“At this stage, it looks like the actions of an individual,” Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Mike Burgess said in rare public comments.
Three other people were treated for non-stab wounds sustained as a result of the attack and about 30 more were treated after a riot that ensued outside the church.
For three hours, more than 500 protesters clashed with a phalanx of riot police who battled to prevent them from re-entering the church and lynching the teen.
He is being held at an undisclosed location and is believed to have also sustained knife injuries. Authorities had originally given the his age as 15.
An Agence France-Presse journalist at the scene late on Monday saw projectiles being hurled before police with riot shields and body armor eventually pushed the protesters away from the church.
Twenty police vehicles and some houses were damaged as the protesters threw bottles, bricks and other items.
One officer was “hit with a metal object and sustained a twisted knee and a chipped tooth,” police said. “Another constable sustained a broken jaw after he was hit with a brick and a fence paling.”
Calm was eventually restored, but more officers were deployed to the neighborhood to protect local religious buildings.
The church said in a statement yesterday that the victim, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, was in a stable condition and “improving.”
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
RSS