The most deadly terrorist attack on Australian soil was the Islamic State-inspired2025 Bondi Beach shooting (detailed timeline), committed by Naveed Akram (who was charged with 15 counts of murder) and his fatherSajid Akram (who was killed by police during the attack), targetingJewish Australians at a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach.Before this, several Islamic State plots were successfully thwarted by Australian intelligence and law enforcement bodies.
Prior to the Bondi attack, one of the most significant Islamic State-related problems faced by the Australian government were the family members of Islamic State fighters from Australia, who remain in detention camps in the Middle East, inKurdistan and neighbouring regions.[16]ASIO estimates that over 200 Australians migrated to the unrecognised state / illegitimate Caliphate founded by the Islamic State movement while they controlled territory in Iraq and Syria.[17][18]Young boys who have been there nearly a decade are transferred to the mens prison when they reach military age.The survivors are mostly widows and children, most of the men died of the battlefield or werekilled in targeted strikes.[19][20]The are also a few remaining Islamic State fighters from Australia who have been confirmed alive or remain unaccounted for.The Australian Government have been criticised for treating the ongoing situation as somebody else's problem.[17]
3 October 2014 – Australian Prime MinisterTony Abbott announced that Australia would contribute eightF/A-18F Super Hornets to aid the war effort against Islamic extremists in Iraq. The aircraft join aKC-30A Tanker and anE-7A Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft already deployed.[23]
29 October 2014 – Australian IS leader and recruiterMohammad Ali Baryalei was confirmed to have been killed.[24]
15 December 2014 –Lindt Cafe siege: in Sydney, byMan Haron Monis. Allegedly an IS supporter who pledged allegiance to the group held 18 hostages at a café at theAPA Building inMartin Place,Sydney,Australia. One hostage was murdered during the siege and one killed by a bullet ricochet from a police officer during the subsequent raid. Perpetrator shot dead by police during raid.
20 April 2015 – An 18-year-old from New Zealand joins IS and is reported missing.[27] New Zealand and Australia are concerned about IS-related terrorism at Anzac day.[28][29][30]
9 September 2015 –Joshua Ryne Goldberg, aJewish American internettroll, was arrested for planning a bombing inKansas City while posing as an Australian ISIS supporter. A 17-year-old Melbourne teenager who had been in contact with Goldberg pleaded guilty to preparing a terror attack, after bombs were found in his home.[31][32] Goldberg's ISIS persona also attempted to incite mass shootings in Australia.[33][34][35] Goldberg reportedly set up a fake account in the name of AustralianMuslim preacherJunaid Thorne. Goldberg also created multiple fake jihadist accounts, which interacted with the fake Thorne account, and he then sentscreengrabs of the fabricated interactions to journalists, at least one of whom published the fake interaction in an article ofThe West Australian in April 2015.[36][37] The fake jihadist personas were also used to besmirchAmnesty International and the Human Rights Law Centre by claiming that the fake jihadists had employment ties, or donated money to, these organizations.[36]
14 September 2015 – Two Australian Hornet fighter aircraft destroyed an IS armoured personnel carrier with a precision-guided missile in east Syria.[38]
25 November 2015 –Samra Kesinovic, an Austrian teenager who traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State, is reported dead, having been beaten to death by the group after trying to escape from Raqqa. Her companion,Sabina Selimovic, was reported to have been killed in fighting in Syria in September.[39]
31 January 2016 – A prominentAustralian IS member's death is reported.Neil Prakash, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, was involved in the group's online recruitment activities.[40]
By 2017 the Islamic State had lost 90% of their territory.[43]
15 July 2017 –Failed Islamic State–linked plan to bomb anEtihad Airways flight departing Sydney for Abu Dhabi.[44] Brothers Mahmoud and Khaled Khayat in Sydney planted a bomb in luggage belonging to their brother Amer Khayat, using parts sent to them by a forth brother, Tarek Khayat, from overseas. Amer was found not guilty, he was used as anunwitting proxy, possibly because his brothers disapproved of his drinking and other habits.[45][46][47][48]
August 2018 – Australia stripped the Australian citizenship from five terrorists who had travelled to fight with the Islamic State and barred them from entering Australia again.[49] This was only possible because they had double citizenships because international law stops the measure from being used on individuals with only one citizenship. The five brought the total to six.[50]
9 November 2018 – a man named Hassan Khalif Shire Ali went on a stabbing spree in MelbourneAustralia. The attack took place on a crowded Melbourne street where he attacked and killed a police officer with a knife and light bulb. The attacker also injured two other bystanders until he was eventually killed by law enforcement. The perpetrator supported IS and IS also took responsibility for the attack.[51][52]
Youssef Uweinat (an associate of Naveed) was convicted of terrorism and imprisoned, for attempting to recruit minors to carry out attacks for IslamicState.[57][58]
January 2024 – A newCommonwealth offence introduced as part of amendments to Australian counter-terrorism legislation outlawing transmission of violent extremist material online. First person sentenced in March 2025.[59][60]
17 May 2024 – IS-K claimed responsibility for the2024 Bamyan shooting in Afghanistan, in the city ofBamyan,Bamyan Province, that led to the deaths of 6 people, including 3Spanish tourists, as well as injuring 8 people, including oneLithuanian, oneNorwegian, oneAustralian and another Spaniard. The majority of the targeted victims were foreign tourists.[61] In Afghanistan, the2024 Bamyan shooting: Gunman attacked a group of Western tourists (Spaniards, Lithuanians, Norwegians, and Australians), alongside their Afghan guides, in the city ofBamyan,Bamyan Province with machine-gun fire, killing seven people (including four tourists), and wounding seven others (including three tourists) before fleeing the scene. Islamic State claimed responsibility.[62]
20 March 2025 – A 19-year oldWest Australian man is sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by thePerth District Court on one count of transmitting violent extremist material online and one count of using a carriage service to cause offence after sharing Islamic State-produced videos that included beheadings and recordings encouraging violence. He is the first person convicted and sentenced in Australia for transmitting violent extremist material online under the new Commonwealth offence introduced in January 2024 as part of amendments to Australian counter-terrorism legislation.[63][64]
3 August 2025 - Two past supporters of Islamic State, connected to Naveed Akram in 2019,[58][65] were noticed trying to exploit public protests to further a conflicting agenda.[57][66] Both men were later reported as a past associate of Naveed Akram from 2019.[58][65] Youssef Uweinat (sometimes known by thekunya Abu Musa al-Maqdisi) was imprisoned from 2019 to 2023 for terrorism-related offences, after trying to recruit 17 and 18-year-olds to pledge loyalty to the Islamic State cult, a role that some media described as an Islamic State "youth recruiter". He has since claimed to no-longer support the cult.[58][65] Uweinat was photographed waving a black flag (used by ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other groups) at the edges ofa protest on the Harbour bridge.[57][67] Both men were later reported as a past associate of Naveed Akram from 2019.[58] William Haddad (see "June 2025" above) posted the flag image on social media saying, "The only flag that counts!" A report fromABC News Australia described the preacher as having "no interest in a Palestinian state" and trying to "exploit and fracture the pro-Palestinian movement".[57]
14 December 2025 –Bondi Beach shooting: Two ISIS inspired gunmen fired upon approximately one thousand people at aHanukkah celebration atBondi Beach inSydney, Australia. A total of 16 people were killed, including a ten-year-old child and 40 people were injured.[68][69]
^abcdKrause, Dino (27 October 2023)."The importance of understanding the between Hamas, IS and al-Qaeda".Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)....could result in misleading assessments of the risks of jihadist terrorism in the West... The idea of a caliphate governed by Sharia-based law and uniting the world's Muslims under a single leader, thereby breaking existing nation-state borders, has historically been central to both al-Qaeda and IS... both al-Qaeda and IS have clashed directly and indirectly with several of these Shi'ite actors in the Syrian Civil War... Qal-Qaeda and IS are themselves fundamentally opposed to each other. In 2014, al-Qaeda's rejection of IS' excommunication of fellow Muslims, as well as IS' refusal to follow orders from al-Qaeda's General Command, led to the split between the two entities and the emergence of IS as a fully independent organization.</ref name="wilsoncenter caliphate" >"Rival Islamic States: ISIS v Iran".Wilson Center. 28 August 2015.The ISIS "caliphate", declared in July 2014, practices a rigid Salafi interpretation of Sharia. It has no constitution. No country recognizes its borders, which include about one third of both Syria and Iraq. It has vowed to fight any state or group that does not share its rigid worldview. It is a member of no international organizations. It persecutes all other faiths and forces conversion.
^"Islamic State or deviant cult?". 14 July 2016.Daesh has been a disaster for the image of Islam and Muslims around the world, and a boon for the Islamophobes. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of reasonable people are fully aware that the self-styled "Islamic State" is merely a group of deviant mercenaries, whose victims are mainly Muslims and whose actions violate the fundamental tenets of Islam.
^independent, Associated Press The Associated Press is an; City, not-for-profit news cooperative headquartered in New York (17 August 2017)."Hamas militant killed by suicide bomber in Gaza".Los Angeles Times.
^Michael West Media 2026 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMichael_West_Media2026 (help): "2017 –Isaac El Matari jailed in Lebanon for attempting to join ISIS: returned to Australia June 2018"
^"Bondi Beach shooting: Israel joins terror probe as calls grow to revi…". 15 December 2025. Archived fromthe original on 15 December 2025.Israel has a long history of sharing counterterrorism intelligence with Australia, including in 2017 when Israeli agencies provided critical information that helped police disrupt an Islamic State-linked plot to smuggle a home-made bomb onto an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi.
^"Wong will not say if further Islamic State family members on track to return".www.abc.net.au.ABC News. 4 December 2025.A group of two women and four children returned to Australia in late September, six years after the terror organisation's defeat, but the government has consistently maintained that it was not involved in their removal from Syria.
^"Livestream Terror in the Viral Video Age". Archived fromthe original on 29 December 2025.Islamic State spokesmanAbu Hassan al-Muhajir (kunya) emerged after nearly six months of silence to argue that Christchurch was "enough to wake the sleep" and to incite supporters against the "nations of the Cross and the apostate". He also likened the attacks to the battle raging in Baghuz, the last village then under Islamic State control in Syria.
^abcde"Bondi Beach shooting gunman Naveed Akram was follower of pro-Islamic State preacher Wisam Haddad".RNZ. 16 December 2025. Archived fromthe original on 29 December 2025.(ASIO were) concerned about Naveed Akram's association with an IS youth recruiter, Youssef Uweinat. Uweinat was later jailed for nearly four years for encouraging Australian minors to launch attacks while acting as a youth leader at Mr Haddad's prayer centre and a street preacher alongside Naveed Akram. After his release, he re-emerged publicly in August, when he was photographed waving a black flag associated with jihadist groups at an anti-Gaza war protest on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
^Michael West Media 2026 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMichael_West_Media2026 (help): "Aug 2025 – Youssef Uweinat photographed waving black ISIS-associated flag at anti-Gaza war protest on Sydney Harbour Bridge; Wissam Haddad posted approving message"
^Michael West Media 2026 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMichael_West_Media2026 (help): "Aug 2025 – Youssef Uweinat photographed waving black ISIS-associated flag at anti-Gaza war protest on Sydney Harbour Bridge; Wissam Haddad posted approving message"
