A royal commission hearing in Sydney on Monday heard there was no specific intelligence warning before the deadly attack at Bondi Beach, where two gunmen allegedly opened fire from a footbridge above Archer Park during a beachside Hanukah celebration on 14 December.

Fifteen people were killed in the assault, which unfolded in seconds and left three police officers injured. Within 29 seconds of the shooting starting, 11 people had been shot and 10 were fatally wounded, according to evidence heard by the commission.

The hearing is examining what police and intelligence agencies knew before the attack, and whether anything in the lead-up could have changed the outcome. Richard Lancaster told the inquiry there was no evidence that any intelligence agency or law enforcement agency had actual knowledge or specific information to suggest there might be an armed attack on the Hanukah celebration at Bondi on 14 December 2025. He said: “In that sense it was a surprise attack.”

The victims were attending Chanukah by the Sea, a celebration held for the local Jewish community at the beachside site. The Community Security Group had asked NSW police for a static police presence for the entire event, but police declined and instead allocated mobile tasking, meaning officers would attend from time to time during the evening.

That decision now sits at the center of the commission’s scrutiny. At the moment the gunmen opened fire, there were four police at Archer Park. Within five minutes, there were 11 police officers on the scene. The first shooter was shot dead and the second was shot and apprehended within seven minutes and 41 seconds of the start of the attack.

Sajid Akram was killed by police, while Naveed was shot and wounded and remains in custody facing charges including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act. Investigators allege the terrorist act may have been inspired by Islamic State.

The timing matters because the hearing is trying to fix, minute by minute, what authorities knew and when they knew it. It has also drawn a sharp line between the absence of a specific warning and the speed with which the attack still turned deadly, raising hard questions about how a public event tied to a Jewish holiday was policed, and whether a different deployment could have changed the scale of the harm.

What the evidence already makes clear is that there was no known warning of the attack, and that the danger only became visible once the shooting had already begun.