Police probe killer’s targeting of women in Sydney mall attack

— Australian police said Monday they are investigating why a 40-year-old man with mental illness appeared to target women as he roamed a Sydney shopping mall with a large knife, killing six people and injuring a dozen more.

Videos shared on social media showed unshaven itinerant Joel Cauchi pursuing mostly female victims as he rampaged through the vast, crowded Westfield shopping complex in Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon.

Five of the six victims killed were women, as well as most of those wounded.

“The videos speak for themselves don’t they, and that’s certainly a line of inquiry for us,” New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb said.

“That’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives, that that seems to be an area of interest — that the offender had focused on women and avoided men,” she told national broadcaster ABC.

Webb stressed that police could not know what was in the mind of the attacker.

“That’s why it’s important now that detectives spend so much time interviewing those who know him.”

Cauchi’s Facebook profile said he came from Toowoomba, near Brisbane, and had attended a local high school and university.

A distinctive gray, red and yellow dragon tattoo on his right arm was used to help identify him.

4 wounded in church stabbing

Emergency services said four people are being treated for “nonlife threatening injuries” after an apparent stabbing at a church service in Sydney on Monday.

The incident comes just two days after a knife rampage in an eastern Sydney shopping mall killed six people.

A live stream showed Monday’s gruesome attack, which took place during a service at an Assyrian church in the west of the city.