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

Security personnel intervened, unleashing a flurry of loud bangs and flashes in the eatery in the heart of the country’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 that in addition, the gunman was shot dead by police. Sky News reported four people were wounded, three of them critically.

The Royal North Shore Hospital admitted a woman in her 40s with a gunshot wound to her leg, according to a spokeswoman.

A bomb robot was sent into the building as police declared the siege over and medics tended to hostages.

“Sydney siege is over. More details to follow,” police announced on Twitter.

The hostage-taker was named by ABC television and other media as a 49-year-old Iranian-born ‘cleric’, Man Haron Monis.

They published a photo of him sporting a beard and a white turban and said he was on bail for a series of violent offences.

The siege of the Lindt chocolate cafe began on Monday morning and triggered a massive security lockdown in Sydney’s financial district as hundreds of police surrounded the site.

Mr 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 ABC. “It’s not a concerted terrorism event or act. It’s a damaged-goods individual who’s done something outrageous.” The Australian newspaper called Mr 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.—AFP

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2014*