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SYDNEY: A 60-year-old man was in custody in Australia Monday after police said he shot up to 50 bullets into a busy Sydney street, wounding more than a dozen people.
Police were called on Sunday evening to the city’s Inner West, where the alleged gunman was firing from his property at random at passing cars and police.
A large contingent of police swarmed the area and locked down the street, before entering the property above a business and arresting the man. They seized a rifle from the scene.
Office worker Joe Azar said he was working across the road when he heard what he thought were fireworks or rocks being thrown at the windows.
“Some guy’s windshield blew up, then the bus stop glass shattered,” Azar told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
“The surreal feeling kicked in like, ‘Oh, this is what’s happening’,” he said.
“It was frantic. It all happened so quick, so I couldn’t comprehend what was going on,” he added.
Police had initially said up to a hundred bullets were fired and 20 people were wounded.
But on Monday, New South Wales Police Acting Superintendent Stephen Parry revised the number of shots to around 50 and the toll of wounded to 16.
“In my 35 years in the police, there’s been very few incidents of this nature where somebody is randomly targeting people in the street,” he added.
The accused shooter was taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries to the area around his eyes sustained during his arrest.
No charges have been laid against the alleged gunman yet. A police investigation is ongoing.
One man self-presented to hospital with a gunshot wound following the incident, but would likely survive, police said.
The remaining people were treated by ambulance staff for minor injuries, including shattered glass as bullets hit their car windows.

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New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon on Monday described the shooting as “serious and terrifying.”
The gunman’s motive was unclear but there were “no known links to terrorism activity or any gang activity,” he told local radio station 2GB.
One witness who gave his name as Tadgh told the national broadcaster ABC he had been watching rugby when he first heard the gunshots.
“It was very loud and ‘bang, bang, bang’ and flash-bangs and sparks and smoke and the whole works. It was something out of a movie, really,” he said.
Mass shootings are relatively rare in Australia.
A ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons has been in place since 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
In August, alleged gunman Dezi Freeman went on the run in the bush after being accused of killing two police officers. He remains at large.
And in 2022, six people including two police officers were killed in a shooting near the small Queensland town of Wieambilla.

THE HAGUE: The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday hands down its verdict on a feared Sudanese militia chief accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity during brutal attacks in Darfur.
Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known by the nom de guerre Ali Kushayb, faces 31 counts of crimes including rape, murder and torture allegedly carried out in Darfur between August 2003 and at least April 2004.
Prosecutors say he was a leading member of Sudan’s infamous Janjaweed militia, who participated “enthusiastically” in multiple war crimes.
But Abd-Al-Rahman, who was born around 1949, has denied all the charges, telling the court they have got the wrong man.
“I am not Ali Kushayb. I do not know this person... I have nothing to do with the accusations against me,” he told the court at a hearing in December 2024.
Abd-Al-Rahman fled to the Central African Republic in February 2020 when a new Sudanese government announced its intention to cooperate with the ICC’s investigation.
He said he then handed himself in because he was “desperate” and feared authorities would kill him.
“I had been waiting for two months in hiding, moving around all the time, and I was warned that the government wanted to arrest me, and I was afraid of being arrested,” he said.
“If I hadn’t said this, the court wouldn’t have received me, and I would be dead now,” added the suspect.
Fighting broke out in Sudan’s Darfur region when non-Arab tribes, complaining of systematic discrimination, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government.
Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjaweed, a force drawn from among the region’s nomadic tribes.
The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.

‘Severe pain’ 

During the trial, the ICC chief prosecutor said Abd-Al-Rahman and his forces “rampaged across different parts of Darfur.”
He “inflicted severe pain and suffering on women, children and men in the villages that he left in his wake,” said Karim Khan, who has since stepped down as he faces allegations of sexual misconduct.
Abd-Al-Rahman is also thought to be an ally of deposed Sudanese leader Omar Al-Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC on genocide charges.
Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for nearly three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 following months of protests in Sudan.
He has not, however, been handed over to the ICC, based in The Hague, where he also faces multiple charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
ICC prosecutors are hoping to issue fresh arrest warrants related to the current crisis in Sudan.
Tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced in a war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which grew out of the Janjaweed militia.
The conflict, marked by claims of atrocities on all sides, has left the northeast African country on the brink of famine, according to aid agencies.
Local leaders in the Kalma camp in South Darfur are renting a Starlink satellite Internet connection on Monday to let survivors watch the verdict.
The area is under RSF control, and the camp is facing a cholera outbreak and a severe hunger crisis.