The War: Sydney’s gang feud between Alameddine, Hamzy, Comanchero groups explained

Between death or imprisonment, the Hamzy and Alameddine families have bled for their territory. See the main players and how it all began here — and watch Episode One of The Daily Telegraph’s gripping new crime documentary The War.

Sydney has seen gang wars in recent years - not like this one though.

For instance, members of the infamous Hamzy family like Bilal, Mejid and Ghassan all survived a major conflict from 2010-2012, as members of the Brothers 4 Life gang.

They’re all dead now, executed along with 10 others in the current underworld feud.

With the drug market proving so lucrative, the younger Alameddine clan came of age and muscled into the Hamzy’s territory.

That led to the Hamzys taking on, perhaps, one fight too many.

The rising Alameddines

Police allege Rafat Alameddine is the leader of the Merrylands-based crime network carrying his surname.

Sources say he is “incredibly smart” and with a trusted crew around him. So much so, he has been able to keep himself at arm’s length from the real business of the street.

Rafat Alameddine is believed to lead the crime clan whjich swept to power and challenged the Hamze dynasty.

Early photos of Rafat alongside his brother Talal, cousins Rachad, Hamdi and Jihad, and friends like Masood Zakaria and Ali Younes, gave no sign of the crime superpower that was set to arise come 2020.

The Alameddine surname first made headlines when Talal was convicted of supplying the gun used to kill NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng outside the Police headquarters in Parramatta.

The power came when the “Alameddine organised crime network” aligned themselves with the Comanchero - the nation’s drug import and dealing goliaths.

Police sources say while the Alameddines initially acted as muscle for the bikie gang, they soon developed their own distribution networks.

By late-2020 police allege they were in an open feud with the Hamzy clan for drug territory and with the backing of the Comanchero bikie gang’s international commander Mark Buddle, things were bound to get more violent.

Hamzy Alameddine prison brawl

Mejid’s death means war

The feud for drug territory between the Alameddine and Hamzy clans became an all-out war in October 2020.

With the underworld already on tenterhooks after the theft of 400kgs of cocaine belonging to Mark Buddle, a member of his allied Alameddine network was bashed.

Members of the Hamzy family are believed to be behind the attack.

Two days later another low-level Alameddine drug runner has his product stolen.

Then the Auburn home of Hamzy family matriarch Maha Hamzy - who has never engaged in wrongdoing - was shot in a drive-by.

Less than 24 hours later the home of Rafat Alameddine was sprayed with bullets.

Then came the real escalation.

On the morning of October 19 Mejid Hamzy was gunned down in a hail of bullets as he walked out of his home at Condell Park.

He was the first Hamzy killed in this gang war.

Mejid Hamzy was murdered near his Condell Park home. Picture: Facebook

Wiping out the Hamzys

As it currently stands, the seven main players of the Hamzy organised crime network fall into two unfortunate categories.

Dead or behind bars.

Bassam Hamzy has been in prison since before the turn of the century but somehow manages to continue being the figurehead of his family and control the operations on the street.

He founded Brothers 4 Life from behind bars and has run large drug trafficking and dealing operations on smuggled mobile phones, thanks largely to the support of his brothers - Mejid Hamzy and Ghassan Amoun.

Bassam Hamzy remains the head of his crime family despite serving a lengthy jail sentence.

In his absence the pair, alongside their cousins Bilal and Ibrahem Hamze, became the leaders of the family.

In doing so, they also made themselves targets.

When Mejid was shot dead the threat of an all out war grew, so Bilal tried to calm tensions with the Alameddines. He organised a meeting with bosses of the rival group and, according to sources, walked away confident there had been some sort of truce.

But “winners never quit”, as one police source said.

As Bilal stepped out onto busy Bridge St on a Thursday night in June 2021, he was mown down by gunfire.

Bilal Hamze became just the latest member of his family to die at the hands of rivals when he was shot dead in June 2021.

When his younger brother Ibrahem Hamze got the phone call to tell him what had happened, he punched a wall in anger - breaking his hand.

But “Ibby” Hamze had troubles of his own.

Police allege the Alameddines had planned to kill him too, near his mother’s North Sydney home. But as armed gunmen approached to do the job police tried to pull them over, forcing them to flee and abandon the hit.

For the next six months they managed to avoid another fatality, until Ghassan Amoun - who for unknown reasons uses his mother’s maiden name - walked out of a beauty salon at South Wentworthville and into a hail of bullets.

Ghassan Amoun was charged as part of ongoing Serious Crime Prevention Order compliance operation in 2020 before eventually being killed. Picture: NSW Police

Just weeks later police would arrest Ibrahem Hamze and his cousins Haissam Hamzy, who it is alleged were involved in a failed attempt on the life of an Alameddine associate outside a gym in November.

With the added deaths of distant relatives Salim Hamze, and his innocent father Toufik, the war has been a bloody, one-sided one for the Hamzys.

Mark Buddle and the Comanchero

Police allege that one of the driving factors behind Mejid Hamzy’s death was the suggestion that he was the one who stole the 400kg cocaine shipment belonging to Mark Buddle.

It was almost literally a nail in Hamzy’s coffin, considering he already had a long running history with the Comanchero boss and had previously tried to put a bounty out on him when Buddle still lived in Sydney.

Despite the fact there continues to be no proof Hamzy had ripped off Buddle, it didn’t matter.

Comanchero boss Mark Buddle continues to pull the strings in Sydney’s underworld despite living in Dubai since 2016.

The bald, musclebound bikie who grew up on the beaches of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, is not one to give out second chances.

Police believe that Buddle was also likely the driving and financial force behind the hit on Fares Abounader, a former Comanchero who was killed two months before Mejid for defecting to the Bandidos.

Buddle’s influence over Sydney’s underworld continues to be enormous.

That is despite the fact he has lived on the other side of the world since moving to Dubai in 2016, when he became aware NSW Police were looking at him over the murder of cash-in-transit guard Gary Alibon, who was shot in the CBD in 2010.

Originally published as The War: Sydney’s gang feud between Alameddine, Hamzy, Comanchero groups explained