The knife attack perpetrated on Monday night by a teenager in a christian church in sydneyin which a bishop and several parishioners were injured, It was “a terrorist act”, according to police sources.
“We believe that there are elements that satisfy (this statement) in terms of religiously motivated extremist (act), Police Commissioner of the Australian state of New South Wales, Karen Webb, said this Tuesday at a press conference in Sydney.
The police chief added that The attacker went “with a certain degree of premeditation” to the Assyrian Church of the Good Shepherd in the Wakeley district, about 30 kilometers west of Sydney, to carry out this knife attack.
Webb also clarified that the attacker, who was not identified, was not on any terrorist watch list.
“This incident is extremely worrying,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in an interview with Australian radio station WSFM, stressing that in his country “there is no place for violence in our community, there is no place for violent extremism”.
The attack, which occurred around 7:00 p.m. local time on Monday at the Assyrian Church of the Good Shepherd in the Wakeley district, It was perpetrated while the religious ceremony was broadcast live on social networks.
In the video you can see how this teenager dressed in black approaches the altar where the religious goes to his parish and stabs the priest repeatedly, even when he was on the ground.
The parishioners come to the aid of the religious and manage to stop the aggressor.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel – 65 years old, who has thousands of followers on social networks and became popular during the covid-19 pandemic for his ultra-conservative sermons against vaccines and the LGBT community – He is recovering from his injuries and is not in danger, like the rest of the injured, saccording to the Police.
As a result of the incident, there have been riots around the church, located in a multicultural community in western Sydney, between the authorities and a crowd demanding that the person responsible for the attack be handed over to them, as seen in a video posted on social networks.
This stabbing occurs about 48 hours after another incident with a knife in a shopping center in the Australian city, which resulted in seven deaths -including the aggressor-.
The Police ruled out that Saturday's attack was terrorist and investigated this Monday if it was due to a femicide.
Australia – where the majority of attacks have been carried out by jihadists armed with knives or firearms in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney – lowered the terrorist alert in 2022 from “probable”, a level that had been in effect since 2014, to “possible” (fourth to third highest level on a scale of five).
EFE
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