Police Storm Cafe to End Sydney Hostage Siege

Sydney, Australia: Heavily armed police officers ended a hostage siege in Sydney early Tuesday, storming a downtown cafe where an armed man said to be a self-proclaimed sheik held hostages for more than 16 hours. (Sydney Siege Ends: Track LIVE Updates Here)

Live television images of the scene showed intense flashes of gunfire and the explosive sound of loud ammunition rounds. Police were racing into the building with weapons drawn, followed by medics with stretchers. But the number of casualties was not immediately clear.

"Sydney siege is over. More details to follow," the New South Wales Police said in a Twitter message about 2:45 am.

Just before the police entered the building, at least six hostages were seen running from the cafe.

Earlier, the police confirmed that the hostage-taker was Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born man in his 50s with a criminal record who called himself Sheik Haron. Australian media reports quoted the man's former lawyer as saying he was acting alone. But it was unclear whether the gunman had accomplices. (Sydney Hostage Taker Identified as Iranian Refugee)

The siege had transfixed Australia since Monday morning, when the gunman took control of the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in central Sydney, with an unknown number of employees and customers trapped inside. The man was carrying a black flag with white Arabic script similar to those used by Islamic militants on other continents, and the flag was later displayed in the window of the cafe.

Five people, including two cafe employees, had fled by 7 p.m. Monday, but it was not clear whether the assailant had allowed them to leave or they had escaped.

Helicopters hovered over the city, the train network was temporarily stopped and strategic buildings - including the nearby Sydney Opera House, the New South Wales Parliament, the state library, law courts and the Reserve Bank - were evacuated or shut down. Traffic was stopped on part of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

According to The Age, a national newspaper, Monis was free on bail in two separate criminal cases. He was charged in November 2013 with being an accessory before and after the fact in the murder of his ex-wife, Noleen Hayson Pal, who was stabbed and set on fire in an apartment in Werrington.

In April 2014, Monis was charged with the indecent and sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney in 2002.

The police have said that Monis held himself out as a spiritual healer and conducted business on Station Street at Wentworthville.

Monis also pleaded guilty in 2013 to 12 charges related to the sending of poison-pen letters to the families of Australian servicemen who were killed overseas, local press reports said.

A website apparently associated with Monis includes condemnation of the United States and Australia for their military actions against Islamic militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Muslim community leader in Sydney, Dr. Jamal Rifi, said in a televised interview that "everything he stands for is wrong." "It has nothing to do with Islam as a religion whatsoever, and we have all seen that by his previous action and his current actions," Rifi said of Monis.

Rifi said that he did not know Monis personally, but that he did know his family well. He said Monis is not a sheik, but had worn traditional clothes and a beard. "He had no religious qualifications whatsoever," Rifi said. "He has never been associated with any mainstream mosque, and he is not associated with any of our religious leaders whatsoever. He is self-proclaimed."

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in a televised appearance from Canberra, the nation's capital, before Monis was publicly identified, referred to him as "an armed person claiming political motivation."

"This is obviously a deeply concerning incident," Abbott said in a statement. "But all Australians should be reassured that our law enforcement and security agencies are well trained and equipped and are responding in a thorough and professional manner."

Stephen Loane, the chief executive of Lindt Australia, said that nine or 10 employees were inside the cafe when the siege started, along with an unknown number of customers. "Originally, we were thinking it was a holdup," he said, but "by the time I got down there, the streets were blocked off and there was a different situation." (After Sydney Siege, #illridewithyou Hashtag Goes Viral)

Armed police officers stand close to a cafe under siege at Martin Place in Sydney (Associated Press).

Soon after the siege began, a commercial television network, Channel Seven, which has a nearby studio, showed images of people, one wearing the Lindt Cafe uniform, pressed against the cafe window, holding up the black flag with white script. The message, though not entirely visible, appeared to be the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith.

Offices near the cafe were evacuated and a number of streets were closed, the police said. The police also asked that people in offices nearby "remain indoors and away from open windows."

The US Consulate General in Sydney, about a block from the cafe, was evacuated.

Adam Dolnik, a professor who researches terrorism at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales, said the hostage-taker seemed likely to be either "a lone wolf sympathetic to the issues of the Islamic State and the goal of jihad more generally" or a case of "psychopathology in search of a cause."

A spokesman for the Islamic State militant group in the Middle East, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, issued a statement in September asking Muslims in Australia to carry out attacks of their own.

On Sept. 12, Abbott raised Australia's terrorism alert level to high from medium after warnings from the nation's security officials that there were increased threats to the nation. He gave the police broader powers to arrest terrorist suspects and tightened restrictions on the news media's reporting on national security matters.

Two weeks later, police officers in Melbourne fatally shot a man who attacked them with a knife.