Hostages Flee as Sydney Standoff Drags On
An assailant carrying a black flag with white Arabic script held hostages in one of this sunny city’s favored holiday haunts — a cafe specializing in chocolate drinks and desserts — through the day Monday, throwing Sydney’s center into lockdown and testing Australia’s heavily armed tactical response police, negotiators and the government’s readiness for a terrorist attack.
The assailant walked into the Lindt Chocolate Café, at the top of Sydney’s Martin Place in the city center, at around 9:45 a.m. local time, locking the door and capturing an unknown number of cafe workers and coffee and chocolate drinkers, some picking up a caffeine hit on their way to work, others taking a midmorning break. The cafe is as much a regular coffee stop for local office workers as it is a tourist draw.
Helicopters hovered over the city, the train network was temporarily stopped and 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. Traffic on part of Sydney’s iconic Harbor Bridge was stopped.