LIVE FEED: Australian cafe held up by someone with Islamic flag

[Minimalist]

He hasn't cut off any heads, yet. He must be one of those 'moderates' we keep hearing about.

[Thumpalumpacus]

And I'd give them one. Soaked in bacon grease sarin.

Fixed for personal preference.

[Aractus]

A few minutes ago police stormed the cafe, seemingly in response to the terrorist, Sheikh Man Haron Monis, firing his shotgun. It is likely that at least one of the hostages has died, which is extremely tragic but as I mentioned earlier not unexpected in this situation.

[Aractus]

It seems I was right about the negotiations, what's being reported is that the one-on-one negotiations didn't begin until after 11 PM.

[LastPoet]

I've heard in the news, it seems the balance is 1 dead hostage and several wounded. The idiot is killed and no one fucking cares. Sad it is for the victyms

[Aractus]

Three have been confirmed dead by the police:

A critical incident investigation has been launched after three people died and four others were injured during a police operation in Sydney’s CBD this morning.

About 2.10am (Tuesday 16 December), a confrontation occurred between police and a man who had taken a number of people hostage inside a café on Martin Place.

Shots were fired during the confrontation.

As a result, the 50-year-old man was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital.

Another man, aged 34, and a woman, aged 38, were pronounced dead after being taken to hospital.

Two women have been taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries, while a male police officer suffered a non-life threatening wound to his face from gunshot pellets and was taken to hospital.

Another woman has been taken to hospital with a gunshot wound to her shoulder.

A 35-year-old woman was taken to hospital as a precaution.

The police operation has concluded and the investigations into entire incident will be overseen by the Professional Standards Command.

All information will be provided to the Coroner who will determine the cause of and make any findings about the events leading to the deaths.

No further details are available at this time; however, police are appealing for witnesses to come forward. Anyone who can assist police should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Also, the 42 year old lady who's tweets I posted above was shot in the leg.

[Forsaken]

Worse than this terrorists are the 9 FB users who liked the post.

On Topic: This is tragic beyond measure! One of my maternal uncles, who recently migrated to Aust from Fiji, was at that cafe just a few minutes before this attack. My heart cries out for the victims but at the same time, filled with rage with these medieval-age thinkers who still walk freely thinking that they can kill humanity at will.

[The Valkyrie]

I would like to have been home in Sydney for this. Not that I think I could have changed the outcome, but so I could try to help the victims.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Sad to hear. Sympathies to the bereaved.

[Aractus]

Facebook was by far the worst social media offender, they reportedly didn't act on posts at all for a very long time, whereas Twitter and Youtube took immediate action to remove the demands posted by the terrorist.

The media in Australia got most of the details right all night, including that two had died and that one was a hostage. At that point it may have been true that the 3rd person hadn't yet passed away, and this could have been why the Police took 3 hours to come up with a statement.

They were also right, and I wasn't, that all the people who left the cafe were escapees.

It seems I was right however, and the media was wrong, that the negotiators were not in direct contact with Man Monis until sometime between 11PM and 12AM, and this goes back to my criticism of the police commissioner: 1. he admitted they didn't know how many hostages were inside live on TV early in the day, 2. although he was trying to make it sound like they had negotiators working on the situation he "urged the gunman to contact their negotiators and not media outlets" clearly using TV to send this message to him and that is from what I deduced that they hadn't yet directly spoken to him (because the media were fully cooperating with police, thus he could have given a stronger statement here and said that the media isn't interested in talking to him because they are leaving the police-work to the professionals working on achieving the best outcome), and 3. He kept saying that the safety of everyone inside the cafe was their top priority. He should have been clearer on this, he should have said that the safety of the hostages and of the hostage taker are their priority. His language itself suggested as "us and him" mentality that would not have helped the situation, the gunman needed to be reassured that a peaceful outcome was possible.

The other fact that allowed me to deduce they had not made contact was that he didn't release any hostages since the 5 that we now know escaped, and if he had been in police negotiations he should have released some hostages since they had been freed. He fired his shotgun perhaps twice before the police then moved to take the cafe by siege. And we now know, as I mentioned before, that he first tried contacting radio presenters using his hostages to do so to voice his demands, then tried contacting TV news reporters, and then tried social media, still with the same demands, at some point instructed hostages to relay the demands to police (perhaps when negotiators were calling hostage phones), and then ultimately sometime between 11 and 12 he spoke directly to negotiators and made the same basic demands directly to police.

To be honest I think they may have made a mistake here. Snipers didn't take any shots because the building was an ex-bank building and they didn't know if the glass was fully tempered anti-ballistic or not. There are however ways of breaking such glass so that a shot can be fired. The other mistake they may have made is to wait too long. With this kind of situation it's very unlikely that the terrorist will not ultimately move to kill any hostages. Especially after he's refused to release any of them - and reportedly he had 17 at the beginning and 12 after the first five had fled. Especially after 14 hours and a delirious hostage makes a move on the armed assailant. And even if the police move when he does, as they did, the terrorist will be able to kill someone (and in this case it appears he caused the death of two people, although it's plausible that one died in the crossfire we'll have to wait for a full statement). The correct time to storm him would have been when his hands are not on his gun and hostages are not close-by. E.g. when he's looking at his tablet.

The final thing I want to say is about the hostages themselves - and some of them (including the survivors) have been identified by the media. In a situation like that you have to look after yourself firstly, and no one else. I take my hat off to all the people who managed to escape, I think they absolutely did the right thing. It may be true that the manager wrestled with the gunman just prior to the siege, and unfortunately after being held captive for 14 hours you're not going to make the most rational decisions and no one can blame him for doing something that seemed to make sense at the time. It was certainly a fatal mistake, but as I mentioned I don't think anyone can blame a hostage victim for doing so in a situation where they've been terrified, frightened and abused by a perpetrator to the point where they think that wrestling with an armed assailant will end well. This is partly why I question why the police didn't make their move sooner, before a hostage put himself into this kind of danger. Again this is if it's true that he tried to wrestle with the terrorist.