Two young female employees have fled a central Sydney cafe more than seven hours after a terrorist armed with a gun took more than a dozen people hostage and forced crying women to hold a black Islamic flag up to the window.
A total of five hostages, including barista Elly Chen, have now escaped the Lindt cafe in Martin Place an hour after a male employee and two male customers scrambled from a fire exit and sheltered behind heavily armed police officers shortly before 3.45pm on Monday.
It is understood the hostages escaped from the cafe, rather than being released by their captor. A male former hostage has been taken to nearby St Vincent's Hospital, in Sydney's inner suburbs, and is being treated for shock.
This evening, police negotiators revealed they had learned the name of the hostage-taker and have made contact with the man.
Chris Reason, a journalist from the Seven Network - whose offices are opposite the cafe - tonight said he could see the gunman rotating the hostages through positions in the store's window.
'From inside Martin Place we can see the faces of hostages - pained, strained, eyes red and raw,' he recounted. Food and water was being delivered to the prisoners from the cafe's back kitchens.
Seven Network staff have counted around 15 hostages in the cafe, he said, rather than the 50 reported by Lindt Australia CEO Steve Loane earlier today. Daily Mail Australia understands a 25-year-old female fashion industry worker and two female baristas aged in their 30s are among that number.
As scores of heavily armed police, clad in black, remained on guard in Martin Place, Deputy NSW Police Commissioner Catherine Burn told reporters police were planning to 'work into the night' - and even tomorrow - should the crisis continue.
Witnesses earlier described how a man wearing a headband covered in Arabic walked into the cafe around 9:30am and produced a shotgun from a blue bag.
Shortly afterwards, as police surged into the city, hostages were seen with their hands pressed against the windows holding up the Islamic Shahada flag. It is an emblem of extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is fighting the Assad government in Syria.
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ReplyDeleteNow they seen in firsthand encounter how difficult it is to tackle terrorism. It's seems near and easy with the Nigerian experience until a wind of it blew on them, did they know that this won't be an easy muscle to wield.
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