Australian police on Tuesday declared the stabbing of a bishop the night previous a terrorist attack. The incident occurred Monday evening at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the suburb of Wakeley, in Sydney. Photo by Bianca de Marchi/EPA-EFE
April 16 (UPI) — Police in Australia on Tuesday declared the stabbing of a Bishop during service Monday evening in Sydney a terrorist attack.
“We can confirm that this incident has now been declared a terrorist attack,” Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said Tuesday during a press conference with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Parliament House in Canberra.
“I can also confirm that this matter is now under the investigation by the [New South Wales] Joint Counter Terrorism team.”
Little was made public about what led to the determination, but Mike Burgess, director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, said the stabbing appears to have been “religiously motivated.”
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, the leader of the Assyrian Church of the East for Australia and New Zealand, was stabbed Monday evening while giving service at Christ The Good Shepherd in Wakeley, in southwest Sydney.
The service was live-streamed, and footage of the incident posted online shows a male individual saunter to the lectern mid-sermon and stab the bishop multiple times.
The NSW Police Force in a statement Tuesday said they were notified of the incident at about 7:10 p.m.
The 53-year-old bishop sustained lacerations to his head, while a 39-year-old man was stabbed in the shoulder when he tried to intervene. Both of their injuries were listed as non-life-threatening and they were transported to Liverpool Hospital.
A 16-year-old boy was detained at the scene and remains in hospital Tuesday under police guard, the NSW Police Force said.
Burgess said during the press conference that it appears that the teenager acted alone, but that they will investigate his associates to ensure no one else poses a similar threat to the public.
“It is prudent that we do this to determine there is no threats or immediate threats to security,” he said. “At this time, we are not seeing that.”
NSW Premier Chris Minns said Tuesday he had convened a meeting of Sydney’s faith leaders the night prior following the stabbing to call for peace.
“Their message to their communities was universal and identical, and that is that they deplore violence in all forms,” he said.
The stabbing was the second to have occurred in Australia’s largest city in three days, after six people were killed and at least a dozen others were injured by a knife-wielding assailant at the the Westfield Shopping Center at Bondi Junction on Saturday.
Albanese said Tuesday during the press conference that there is no place for violence nor violent extremism in Australia.
“We are a peace-loving nation,” he said. “This is a time to unite, not divide as a community and as a country.”