A 17-hour-long hostage drama in which a lone heavily-armed man of Iranian-origin held 17 people hostage at a cafe here ended late tonight with the police storming it, resulting in three deaths but two Indians who were among the captives escaped safely.
Police fired stun grenades and shots as they stormed the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney's commercial district after 2:30 AM local time Tuesday (9 PM IST Monday) and later declared that the siege was over.
The 50-year-old gunman Man Haron Monis and two hostages were killed and four other people were injured, Commissioner Andrew P Scipione of the New South Wales(NSW) police said at a joint news conferencewith the state Premier Mike Baird at 5.45 AM local time.
The gunman was shot and pronounced dead after being taken to hospital, NSW police said in a statement.
Two hostages--a 34-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman-- were also pronounced dead after being taken to hospital, it said.
A police officer was among the four injured, police said.
The gunman, a self-styled Muslim cleric, was described by his former lawyer as an isolated figure, who was acting alone.
Two Indian nationals -- Vishwakant Ankit Reddy and Pushpendu Ghosh -- were among the hostages involved when Monis began his siege. However, Reddy, an Infosys employee in his mid-30s, and Ghosh, whose details were not known, escaped safely.
Reddy has been working in Australia for the past seven years and is a native of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh.
Both are undergoing medical check-ups, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said in New Delhi.
Monis, who arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1996, notoriously sent letters to the families of Australian soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan, accusing them of being murderers.
In November last year, he was charged with being an accessory before and after the murder of his ex-wife, who was allegedly stabbed and set alight in her apartment complex. In March, he was charged with sexually and indecently assaulting a young woman in 2002.
Baird called the attack "horrendous and vicious".
