Preliminary evidence indicates Naveed Akram, 24, staged a “terrorist attack inspired by ISIS," police said Wednesday. The charges came as the first funerals for victims were held under tight security.

The Australian authorities said the 24-year-old man, who had been shot by the police, woke from a coma on Tuesday afternoon.

Naveed Akram, the surviving suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one of committing a terrorist act, according to the New South Wales local court. The other gunman, his father Sajid Akram, 50, was killed in an exchange of fire with police at the scene.

About 200 people participated in a commemorative swim at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Wednesday to pay tribute to the victims of Sunday's mass shooting.

Two Sydney rabbis killed in the Bondi Beach Hanukkah festival shootings were remembered by hundreds of mourners in the Australian city on Wednesday as kind and curious men who would be dearly missed by their friends,

Australia's prime minister said the suspects in the shooting at the Hanukkah event were “motivated by Islamic State ideology.” They had traveled to the Philippines before the attack, officials said.

The victims of a mass shooting at Sydney's Bondi Beach range from a 10-year-old girl with a gentle soul to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor.

Investigators are continuing to probe suspected links to Islamic State and a trip the father and son took to the Philippines prior to Sunday's attack. Follow live.

The beach, a worldwide symbol of a free-wheeling iconically Australian way of life, serves as the nation's spiritual backyard, and the massacre has sent ripples of shock and grief not only through Sydney but the nation.