Australian authorities on Tuesday declared the knife attack on a bishop and congregants at a church in western Sydney was a terrorist incident likely motivated by religious extremism, taking place just two days after six were killed in a separate mass stabbing in the city.
Police patrol outside the Christ the Good Shepherd church in suburban Wakely in western Sydney, ... [+]
New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb said the decision to declare Monday’s attack a terrorist incident was influenced by the fact that the stabbing appeared premeditated and the attacker’s religious comments during the incident.
“We believe there are elements that are satisfied in terms of religiously motivated extremism,” Webb said.
The suspected attacker—identified as a male teenager—was arrested at the scene by police, who had to briefly hold him at the church as an angry mob of the bishop’s followers gathered outside the church and clashed with the police.
The state’s Premier Chris Minns met with several religious leaders and called for calm as the police undertake a “major terrorism investigation.”
Christ the Good Shepherd Church, the Assyrian church where the incident took place, issued a statement saying it awaited the police’s findings about what it said was an isolated incident and urged its followers against “retaliation of any kind.”
In a press conference on Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “There is no place for violence in our community. There is no place for violent extremism. We are a peace-loving nation. This is a time to unite, not divide as a community and as a country.” Commenting on the clash between the police and the crowd outside the church, Albanese added: “It is not acceptable to impede and injure police doing their duty or to damage police vehicles in a way that we saw last night. People should not take the law into their own hands.”
The U.S. Embassy in Australia issued an alert to its citizens in the country, urging them to “remain vigilant; be aware of your surroundings; and practice sound personal security and situational awareness.” Despite this, the State Department’s travel advisory for Australia remains unchanged at Level 1.