Triple ambush increases fears of Sydney gang war

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Fears of a growing gang war are mounting with the shooting of three men in Sydney, one reportedly a member of one of the city's most notorious families.

The men were shot on Sunday night while walking along The Promenade at Old Guildford by an unknown number of attackers who fired more than eight rounds before fleeing.

Police said a 23-year-old Auburn man and an 18-year-old Harris Park man were shot in the legs by gunmen who attacked from a dark vehicle. A 19-year-old man from Wentworthville was hit in the groin. All three were reported in a stable condition. Police, while not ruling out gang involvement, declined to name the victims and would not comment on media reports that one was related to the Ibrahim family, prominent in Kings Cross. But police said they believed the victims would have known their attackers.

"I am personally sick and tired of these types of offences occurring," Fairfield local area commander Superintendent Peter Lennon said. "They are senseless, they are a blight on society, a stain on the whole community that we live in. What makes it even worse is that there's people that would know why things like this are occurring and they're not coming forward."

Speculation that the shootings involve a turf war grew yesterday after ABC radio reported that members of the Ibrahim family had gathered outside Westmead Hospital, where two of the men were being treated.

Ibrahim family bodyguard Tongan Sam, as well as Sam Ibrahim and sister Armani Haddad, are believed to have visited one of the men, believed to be a relative, news.com.au reported.

John Ibrahim, a Kings Cross nightclub owner, has frequently been the subject of police intelligence reports, although he has never been convicted of a crime and denied allegations during the 1996 Wood Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service that he was the "lifeblood" of the district's drug scene.

His brother Hassan "Sam" Ibrahim, 44, is a former branch president of the Nomads motorcycle club, which splintered in 2007 to form a new club, Notorious, now believed to be feuding with the Comanchero outlaw bike club.

Last month Sam Ibrahim was shot in each thigh outside his mother's home in the western Sydney suburb of Merrylands, in an attack the police are treating as attempted murder.

After the shooting the Daily Telegraph reported that senior police had met John Ibrahim to appeal for calm, amid fears the attack on his oldest brother Sam could spark a war between rival bikies.

The newspaper said a senior gangs squad detective had expressed concerns that revenge attacks could already be in the planning stages.

Last June another brother, Fadi, was shot five times in the stomach, chest and arm while he sat in his Lamborghini car outside his home in Castle Cove, on Sydney's North Shore.

With him was his fiancee, Shayda Bastani Rad, 23, who was hit in the thigh. Bastani had previously been engaged to Faouzi Abou Jibal, a friend of Ibrahim's who was killed after a fight in which another man had been stabbed to death by yet another Ibrahim brother, Michael, later jailed for six and a half years.