Battle of Broken Hill

Battle of Broken Hill
Part of the First World War
Broken Hill Show map of New South Wales Broken Hill Show map of Australia
Location	Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia
Date	1 January 1915; 109 years ago (1915-01-01)
Target	Australian civilians
Attack type	Ambush, spree shooting
Deaths	6 (including both perpetrators)
Injured	7
Perpetrator	Badsha Mahommed Gool Mullah Abdullah
Motive	Ottoman nationalism, Islamic extremism, personal vendetta

The Battle of Broken Hill, also known as the Broken Hill massacre, was an incident that took place near the Australian town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, on 1 January 1915. Two Muslim former camel drivers from colonial India who supported the Ottoman Empire—Badsha Mahommed Gool and Mullah Abdullah—shot dead four people and wounded seven others before being killed by the police and local vigilantes. Although the attacks were politically and religiously motivated, the men were not members of any sanctioned armed force. Three days after the attack, the pair's suicide notes were discovered by a miner. Mullah Abdullah's note suggested he was motivated primarily by personal grievances against a local food safety inspector.

The incident has been described as Australia's first terrorist attack.^{[citation needed]} In 1995, Australia's Turkish community announced plans to create a memorial in honour of Gool and Abdullah and the Turkish embassy in Canberra requested that the assailants' remains be handed over to the Turkish government for burial in that country. In 2014, the mayor of Broken Hill requested that the Australian government help finance a ceremony marking the one-hundredth anniversary of the incident. The request was rejected by the government, but the ceremony was held regardless. The attack has been dramatised in film, literature and art.