Two dead: Sydney siege ends as police storm cafe

Local media said gunman shot dead by police


Afp December 15, 2014

SYDNEY:


At least two people were killed as heavily armed Australian police early on Tuesday dramatically stormed a central Sydney cafe to end a day-long siege that sparked when an Iranian-born alleged militant took several people hostage.


Security forces intervened, unleashing a flurry of loud bangs and flashes in the eatery in the heart of Australia’s biggest city, after a number of the staff and customers managed to flee for their lives.

An AFP photographer saw one body carried out. Australian media said the gunman was shot dead by police. Sky News also reported four people were wounded, three of them critically.

Royal North Shore Hospital had admitted a woman in her 40s with a gunshot wound to her leg, a spokeswoman said. She was in a serious but stable condition.

A bomb robot used to detect and disarm explosives was subsequently sent into the building as police declared the siege over and medics tended to hostages. “Sydney siege is over,” police announced on Twitter. The hostagetaker was named by ABC television as a 49-year-old Iranian-born man named Haron Monis.

The siege at the Lindt chocolate cafe began Monday morning and triggered a massive security lockdown in Sydney’s financial district.

Monis’s former lawyer Manny Conditsis said the public could be assured that the siege was not the work of an organised terrorist group. “This is a one-off random individual,” he told broadcaster ABC. “It’s not a concerted terrorism event or act.”

The Australian newspaper called Monis a “self-styled sheikh” who had sent offensive letters to the families of dead soldiers and was on bail on charges of being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.

The gunman made a series of demands through Australian media but they were removed after police requested they not be made public.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16th, 2014. 

COMMENTS (2)

Weirdity | 9 years ago | Reply

Good news! The gun man is not of pakistani origin.

Iqbal | 9 years ago | Reply

Once again, Muslims getting bad publicity. We need to ask ourselves where we are heading and whether we are of relevance in the 21st Century. I will never understand why we never appreciate hospitality afforded to us when we are granted citizenship in a foreign country. My condolences to the hostages killed in this hostage.

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