SYDNEY: Australian authorities said on Thursday they were treating as a terrorism incident an attempt to bomb a rally protesting against the country’s national day on Jan 26, the first such charge in the state of Western Australia.
They arrested a 31-year-old man on accusations of hurling a homemade bomb into a crowd of several thousand people in the city of Perth. No one was injured because the bomb did not explode.
Police and state leader Roger Cook said the man held white supremacist views and the attack was an attempt to target Aboriginal people, one of Australia’s two main Indigenous groups.