Details have come to light of the radical beliefs and a possible trip to an extremist hotspot by the father and son responsible for Australia’s deadliest mass murder in three decades.

Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed Akram, 24, fired toward a Jewish gathering at Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens more.

“Early indications point to a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said in Sydney on Tuesday.

While the investigation was still in its early states, there was no evidence suggesting others were involved in the attack, Barrett said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earlier said the duo were influenced by an “extreme perversion of Islam”, but there was no evidence they were part of a larger cell.

“It would appear that this was motivated by Islamic State ideology,” he told ABC radio on Tuesday.

The ABC reports the Akrams travelled to the Philippines to receive “military-style training” in the month before the Bondi attack.

Citing security sources, the ABC said they travelled to Manila in early November and then onto southern Philippines, where they underwent militant training.

They reportedly returned to Australia in late November, just weeks before Sunday’s massacre at Bondi Beach.

The two men travelling to the Philippines in the weeks preceding the attack wasn’t believed to have triggered any alerts to authorities, NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said.

The South-East Asian nation is a known hotspot for the Islamic State of East Asia, which is a designated terrorist organisation in Australia.

“Where they went is unknown at this stage and subject to the investigation,” Lanyon said.

Improvised explosive devices and two homemade IS flags were found in a car registered to Naveed, he said.

Naveed Akram came to the attention of Australia’s intelligence agency ASIO in 2019. He was interviewed due to his association with two people who were subsequently jailed.

“What ASIO do is they go through and interview anyone who is connected in any way, and they go through, including family members and others,” Albanese said.

“They determined that there was no evidence of this person planning or considering or indeed promoting any act of violence, or any act which could be deemed to be antisemitic, targeting the Jewish community, which is what occurred.

“That investigation went for six months and that is a determination that they made.”

Albanese said it the investigation into how Akram was radicalised continued.

Naveed is an Australian-born citizen while Sajid arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa before transferring to a partner visa in 2001.

Sajid travelled out of Australia three times and returned on resident visas, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said.

The father owned six firearms legally, four of which were found at the scene. Two more were recovered from a house in Campsie, in Sydney’s south-west, which the father and son used as a short-term rental ahead of the attack.

Sajid initially applied for a gun licence in 2015 but didn’t get a required photo taken and the application lapsed in 2016, Lanyon said.

He applied again in 2020 and a licence was issued in 2023.

Police have raided the Campsie rental and their home in Bonnyrigg.

Sajid was fatally shot during the massacre at Bondi, while Naveed Akram remains in a coma in hospital.

The 24-year-old had surgery on Monday and is under close police guard.

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-with AAP