In a shock attack that has rattled Australia, six people were stabbed to death and several others were injured in a knife attack at a popular Sydney shopping mall.

Emergency services rushed to the scene at 3:30pm local time on Saturday as terrifying reports were made of a lone knifeman indiscriminately targeting members of the public.

Videos have since emerged of the attacker, identified as Joel Cauchi, wearing a rugby league shirt and carrying a large blade, with shoppers fleeing in panic.

The attacker’s father, Andrew Cauchi, told reporters on Monday he was devastated by the news of the attack and said his son had a long history of mental illness.

“He wanted a girlfriend and he has no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain,” he said in comments reported by The Australian newspaper.

Mr Cauchi said he had taken five US army knives from Joel when Joel visited him last year as he feared he could get stabbed.

The final victim of the stabbing attack at a Sydney shopping centre has been identified as Chinese student Yixuan Cheng.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that Cheng was one of the six people killed in the knife attack at the Westfield shopping centre at Bondi Junction in the east of the city.

“She was a Chinese national studying here who’s lost her life, along with Ashlee Good, Dawn Singleton, Jade Young, Pikria Darchia and the security guard who lost his life, a refugee who had only been here for a short period of time,” he said in an interview with Triple M radio.

A police officer and several bystanders are being praised for their bravery in rushing towards danger to confront the attacker responsible for fatally stabbing six people at a suburban Sydney shopping centre.

The shopping mall, located near the renowned Bondi Beach and one of the busiest in the country, was bustling with activity on Saturday afternoon when 40-year-old Joel Cauchi used a knife attack five women and one man. He also injured at least a dozen others, including a 9-month-old baby whose mother tragically perished during the assault, before being shot dead by a police officer.

NSW premier Chris Minns said the number would have been far higher if the people had not “cornered and confronted a murderer”.

They showed “what I would call instinctive bravery under terrible circumstances”, he said.

He praised the inspector Amy Scott who shot and killed Cauchi.

“(Scott)… ran towards danger and showed professionalism and bravery and without a shadow of a doubt, saved many, many lives in the last 24 hours,” he said.

Videos have since emerged of the attacker, identified as Joel Cauchi, wearing a rugby league shirt and carrying a large blade, with shoppers fleeing in panic.

The owner of a knife-sharpening business in Queensland told Guardian Australia that Sydney attacker Joel Cauchi had asked about sharpening two “everyday knives” about three years ago.

The business owner said they thought the request was “weird” as “he wasn’t a chef or a butcher”.

They added: “He goes, ‘oh no, I just do a bit of dabbling in the backyard with the knives and I use them every day’.”

Prime minister Anthony Albanese said “the gender breakdown … was concerning” when asked on ABC Radio if it was a gender-motivated attack.

Australian police said today the attacker who fatally stabbed six people at a busy shopping centre in Sydney‘s beach suburb of Bondi may have targeted women.

“It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that seems to be an area of interest that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men,” New South Wales state Police Commissioner Karen Webb told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“The videos speak for themselves, don’t they? That’s certainly a line for inquiry for us.”

In a letter to The Independent, reader Richard Whiteside, from Halifax, writes:

The tragic killings in Sydney come not long after the Nottingham stabbings, where the perpetrator in both instances had mental health issues. Of course, the care systems in both these cases appear to have failed.

The wider point I would like to make is that these horrible events make the public fear all people with mental health issues and continue to ensure that they are discriminated against and given few opportunities. This is solely because the media never tells any stories of the good and positive contributions people with mental health issues make every single day. This must change. Rather than writing off the mentally ill as villains, we must look at why the system fails them.