SYDNEY -- Heavily armed police officers ended a hostage siege in Sydney early this morning, storming a downtown cafe where an armed man held employees and customers for more than 16 hours.
The captor and two hostages died during the confrontation, and four other people were wounded, the New South Wales police said this morning.
Live television images of the scene showed intense flashes of gunfire and loud concussions from stun grenades as police officers raced into the building with weapons drawn about 2:10 a.m. in Sydney, followed later by medics with stretchers.
The police statement reporting the deaths identified the hostage-taker as "a 50-year-old man" but did not give his name. Andrew Scipione, the New South Wales police commissioner, referred to the man as a "lone gunman" in his remarks at a news conference today.
In an earlier statement, the police confirmed reports that the hostage-taker was Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born man with a criminal record who called himself Sheik Haron.
The police also said there were 17 hostages in all.
Scipione wouldn't say whether the two hostages who were killed -- a 34-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman -- were caught in crossfire or shot by their captor.
The woman was later identified as a Sydney lawyer and mother of three, Katrina Dawson.
"Katrina was one of our best and brightest barristers who will be greatly missed by her colleagues and friends," Jane Needham, president of the New South Wales Bar Association, said in a statement.
The other victim was identified in Australian media as the manager of the cafe, Tori Johnson.
Among the four wounded was a police officer, who was treated for an injury to the face and was in good condition, the police said.
"Until we were involved in this emergency action, we believed that no one had been injured. That changed. We changed our tactic," he said.
Scipione said the police moved quickly to storm the cafe after gunshots were heard inside.
"They made the call because they believed that at that time, that if they didn't enter, there would have been many more lives lost," he said.
An investigation into the situation is underway.
"I can only imagine the terror that they've been through," Scipione said of the hostages. "They are very brave people who in many cases were just buying a cup of coffee and they got caught up in this dreadful affair. We should reflect on their courage."
The siege had transfixed Australia since Monday morning, when the armed man took control of the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in central Sydney with employees and customers trapped inside. He was carrying a black flag with the Shahada, or Islamic declaration of faith, written on it in white Arabic script.
The Shahada, which translates as, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger," is considered the first of Islam's five pillars of faith. It is pervasive throughout Islamic culture, including the green flag of Saudi Arabia. Jihadis have used the Shahada in their own black flag.
Soon after the siege began, a commercial television network, Channel Seven, which has a nearby studio, showed images of people, one wearing the Lindt cafe uniform, pressed against the cafe window holding the flag.
Stephen Loane, the chief executive of Lindt Australia, said that nine or 10 employees were inside the cafe, along with an unknown number of customers.
"Originally, we were thinking it was a holdup," he said, but "by the time I got down there, the streets were blocked off and there was a different situation."
Hundreds of police flooded the city. Helicopters hovered above. Strategic buildings -- including the nearby Sydney Opera House, the New South Wales Parliament, the state library, law courts and the Reserve Bank -- were evacuated or shut down. The U.S. Consulate General in Sydney, about a block from the cafe, was also evacuated.
Channel 10 news said it received a video in which a hostage in the cafe relayed the gunman's demands. The station said police requested they not broadcast it.
Five people, including two cafe employees, had fled by 7 p.m. Monday, but it was not clear whether the assailant had allowed them to leave or they had escaped.
'A long history'
Monis' former lawyer, Manny Conditsis, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in a televised interview before the siege ended that he believed Monis was acting alone.
"His ideology is just so strong and so powerful that it clouds his vision for common sense and objectiveness," Conditsis said, calling his former client "a damaged-goods individual who has done something outrageous."
Even so, it remained unclear whether Monis had any accomplices.
While Monis' motivation for the attack was still unclear, Prime Minister Tony Abbott confirmed he was "well-known" to state and federal authorities, saying that Monis had "a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and mental instability."
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Monis was free on bail in two separate criminal cases. He was charged in November 2013 with being an accessory before and after the fact in the murder of his ex-wife, Noleen Hayson Pal, who was stabbed and set on fire in an apartment in Werrington.
In April 2014, Monis was charged with the 2002 indecent and sexual assault of a woman in western Sydney. He was later charged with 40 more counts of indecent or sexual assault relating to six other women.
The police have said that Monis presented himself as a spiritual healer and conducted business for a time on Station Street in Wentworthville, a western suburb of Sydney.
Monis pleaded guilty in 2013 to 12 charges related to sending what a judge called "grossly offensive" letters to the families of Australian servicemen who were killed in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2009, local news reports said. He was sentenced to probation and 300 hours of community service.
At the time, Monis said his letters were "flowers of advice," adding: "Always, I stand behind my beliefs."
A website apparently associated with Monis includes condemnation of the United States and Australia for their military actions against Islamic militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.
News reports said the site also contained a posting saying Monis had recently converted from Shia to Sunni Islam, and SITE, an organization that monitors Islamic extremist groups, said he posted a pledge of allegiance to the "Caliph of the Muslims." The posting appeared to refer to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State, SITE said, though the posting did not mention them by name.
He immigrated to Australia from Iran about 1996 and was previously known as Manteghi Boroujerdi or Mohammad Hassan Manteghi. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said he was granted political asylum. In a broadcast interview in 2001, he claimed to have worked for the Iranian intelligence ministry and to have fled the country in fear for his life, leaving behind a wife and family.
Grieving
Lindt issued a statement saying it was "profoundly saddened and deeply affected about the death of innocent people."
"We are devastated by the loss of their lives and that several others were wounded and had to experience such trauma," said the statement from the Swiss company Lindt & Sprugli. "Our thoughts and feelings are with the victims and their families who have been through an incredible ordeal, and we want to pay tribute to their courage and bravery."
Flags were lowered to half-staff on the landmark Harbour Bridge as Australians awakened to the surreal conclusion of the crisis. The state's premier expressed disbelief that the attack could happen in Australia -- a place he dubbed "a peaceful, harmonious society which is the envy of the world."
"In the past 24 hours, this city has been shaken by a tragedy that none of us could have ever imagined," the premier of New South Wales, Mike Baird, said at the news conference. "The values we held dear yesterday we hold dear today. They are the values of freedom, democracy and harmony. These defined us yesterday, they will define us today, they will define us tomorrow."
The grand mufti of Australia, professor Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, and the Australian National Imams Council issued a joint statement about the hostage siege Monday, saying they "condemn this criminal act unequivocally."
In a show of solidarity for the country's tiny Muslim minority of some 500,000 people in a nation of 24 million, thousands of Australians offered in social media messages to accompany people who dress in traditional Muslim clothing and are concerned about a backlash from the siege. The hashtag #IllRideWithYou was used more than 250,000 times on Twitter by late Monday evening.
"This is obviously a deeply concerning incident," Abbott said in a statement. "But all Australians should be reassured that our law enforcement and security agencies are well trained and equipped and are responding in a thorough and professional manner."
In related news, the cab-hailing company Uber was promising free rides and refunds Monday for people who were fleeing central Sydney after coming under criticism for raising prices during the hostage crisis.
Technology news website Mashable reported that Uber was briefly charging customers a minimum fare of $82 and four times the usual per-mile rate to leave the city center.
Uber, which offers a service based on hailing taxis from its app, quickly backtracked after an outcry on social media. The company explained that it had used automatic "surge pricing" to encourage more drivers to get online and pick up passengers.
It wrote Monday on its Sydney blog that it was in the process of refunding people who had already paid the excessive fares and was giving free rides to others in the city.
Information for this article was contributed by Michelle Innis and Austin Ramzy of The New York Times and by Kristen Gelineau, Rod McGuirk, Nick Perry, Jocelyn Gecker, Shawn Pogatchnik, Maamoun Youssef and staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/16/2014