Australian police classify church attack as “terrorist act”

The knife attack carried out this Monday at a church in Sydney, in which four people were injured, was considered a “terrorist act”, announced the Australian police. Police detained a 15-year-old teenager as the perpetrator of the attack.

A bishop and the young suspect were among those treated for “non-life-threatening injuries” after the attack on Monday night, during a sermon broadcast live on the Internet from an Assyrian church. The attack was “an act of terrorism”, police sources said.

“We believe there are elements that satisfy (this statement) in terms of a religiously motivated extremist (act), said Karen Webb, police commissioner for the Australian state of New South Wales, at a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday. (local time).

The attack took place around 7pm local time (8am in Lisbon) on Monday at the Assyrian Church of the Good Shepherd, in the Wakeley district. The suspect was treated for injuries to his hands and taken to safety after the attack sparked fury among parishioners, said Andrew Holland, a senior New South Wales state police officer.

Holland added that, following the attack, which seriously injured the pastor and three other people, two police officers were hospitalized and several vehicles were damaged during the “violent protests” that followed.

The agents were injured after several worshipers threw “bottles, bricks and other objects”, said the same representative. According to the local press, the presumed attacker, who attacked while the pastor was reading the sermon, was arrested by police authorities while still inside the church.

According to the first information regarding this case, the police said that the suspect is cooperating in the investigations and assured that the injured victims’ lives were not in danger. During the live broadcast of the sermon, and according to the images available and cited by international agencies, a man dressed in dark clothes can be seen approaching the pastor, before moving in to attack.

This incident happened two days after another stabbing left six dead in a shopping center in Sydney.