Sydney seige

[Guinevere]

In that emboldened list of horror you missed that his ex-wife was stabbed and set alight. Jesus Christ, I hope she was dead before she was immolated.

CNN is reporting that special forces stormed the café, and the hostage-taker was shot and killed.

[Lord Jim]

He was out on bail for the charges related to that...

I'd like more details on this:

He was charged in November 2013 as accessory in that murder and made bail, (I'd like to know what the bail was) he apparently hasn't gone to trial for that yet.

Then in April of this year, he was charged with sexual assault , and then this past October he was hit with 40 more charges...

Why wasn't his bail revoked?

[Gob]

Christ only knows, the guy was a lunatic.

[Gob]

Two people died, along with an Islamist gunman, after commandos stormed a cafe in Sydney, Australia, to bring to an end a 16-hour siege.

The gunman, identified as an Iranian refugee, had taken dozens of hostages.

Four people were injured, including a policeman hit by gunshot pellets

A 34-year-old man and a woman aged 38 were pronounced dead after being taken to hospital, as was the gunman, the New South Wales police force said in a statement.

Two women suffered non-life threatening injuries as did a policeman who had been hit in the face by pellets.

Another woman suffered a gunshot wound to her shoulder.

New South Wales state police commissioner Andrew Scipione said it had been an "isolated incident".

Seventeen hostages were accounted for, including those who had managed to escape earlier, he said.

Local media reports suggest the commandos from the Royal Australian Regiment entered the building after the gunman started firing shots.

Commissioner Scipione urged people not to "speculate" about what had happened inside the cafe and said police believed more lives could have been lost if officers had not entered the cafe at that point.

[Gob]

As the memorial to the victims of the Sydney siege continues to grow, a Muslim bride has made a pilgrimage on her wedding day to lay flowers at Martin Place.



Adorned in a white wedding dress, which included a traditional white hijab and veil, newlywed Manal Kassem arrived at the memorial with her husband, Mahmod Homaisi, to place her wedding bouquet among the tens of thousands of other floral tributes in the square. The 23-year-old bride had planned for her wedding photos to be taken in the city, but had been hesitant to continue after the tragic events of Tuesday morning which claimed the lives of three people.

'She was going to cancel [the photoshoot] because she didn't want to be judged...celebrating her wedding in a scarf while people were terrorised,' said the couple's wedding planner Dina Kheir. 'But she made is a priority to visit the memorial site as the first pit stop,' Ms Kheir said. A witness said that as the couple approached, clad in their wedding gear, the crowd that had gathered to lay their own floral tributes stared in surprise.



When Ms Kassem, from Punchbowl, placed her bouquet of white roses held together with ribbon at the memorial, the crowd erupted in applause. 'She did it out of respect for her country, that will one day be the country of her children and grandchildren,' said Ms Kheir.