SYDNEY, Dec 29 — When the shots rang out at a Hanukkah gathering on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Ahmed al-Ahmed did not think of heroism. He thought of stopping the killing.

In verified footage from the attack, the Sydney shop owner, born and raised in Syria, is seen tackling one of the two gunmen from behind and wrenching a long gun from his hands. 

Speaking in an exclusive interview with CBS News, Ahmed described the split second that propelled him forward.

“I hold him with my right hand and start saying a word, you know, like to warn him — ‘drop your gun, stop doing what you’re doing’,” the father of two said.

The attack on December 14 left 15 people dead and 40 injured in what police have declared a terrorist incident targeting the Jewish community — Australia’s deadliest mass shooting since 1996. 

One alleged gunman, Sajid Akram, 50, was shot dead by police. His son, Naveed, who was hospitalised after the attack, has since been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one of committing a terrorist attack.

Ahmed was shot several times by the second alleged gunman as he grappled with the first.

He later said his actions saved “lots of people… but I feel sorry still for the lost.”

Recounting the moment he intervened, Ahmed told CBS News that his aim was singular. 

“My target was just to take the gun from him, and to stop him from killing a human being’s life and not killing innocent people.”

What ran through his mind was not strategy, he said, but an overwhelming moral pull. 

“Emotionally, I’m doing something, which is I feel something, a power in my body, my brain,” he said. 

“I don’t want to see people killed in front of me, I don’t want to see blood, I don’t want to hear his gun, I don’t want to see people screaming and begging, asking for help. That’s my soul asking me to do that.”

Ahmed sustained gunshot wounds to his shoulder and has undergone at least three operations. 

In the days after the shooting, as Australia grappled with grief and shock, he was visited in hospital by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who described him as “the best of our country”, while New South Wales premier Chris Minns called him a “real-life hero”.

Tens of thousands of people, moved by the footage and the accounts of those who survived, donated to a public appeal. 

At his hospital bedside, Ahmed was presented with a cheque for A$2.5 million (RM6.8 million), raised by the community.

For Ahmed, the recognition sits uneasily alongside the loss. 

He speaks not of courage but of a refusal to accept what was unfolding before him — a reminder that, in moments of horror, humanity can still surge forward.