Australian police believe explosives found on Sydney’s outskirts were evidence of a deadly escalation in a campaign of antisemitic arson and graffiti crimes that has been waged in major cities for months.

Australian police have said they foiled a potential antisemitic attack on discovering a trailer packed with explosives in northwest Sydney, alarming the Jewish community following a spate of arson and graffiti incidents.

The explosives located in a caravan could have caused a 'potential mass casualty event', authorities have said.

A Jewish school and two other properties in Sydney were sprayed with antisemitic slurs, authorities said on Thursday (January 30), a day after police said they had foiled an attack involving explosives in a suburb of the nation's biggest city.