Police have locked down the centre of Australia's biggest city after a gunman walked into a café in downtown Sydney, took hostages and forced them to display an Islamic flag.
It is not yet known how many people are inside the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Martin Place, but five hostages have managed to escape in the ten hours since the siege began.
The gunman's identity has not yet been made public but he is known to have contacted several media outlets to make demands.
Footage from the scene showed people standing at the cafe's windows, holding
black flags with white Arabic writing on them, sparking fears of a jihadist
attack.
"They were not, as originally reported, Isil flags, but black flags which translate roughly as 'There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of God'," explained Jonathan Pearlman, The Telegraph's reporter at the scene of the siege.
"So it's clearly a flag with a bit of Islamic significance, but there have been reports that the gunman wanted the Isil flag brought to the café."
"Security agencies in Australia have been very concerned for the last few months about Islamic extremists in Australia and the risks of a home-grown terrorist attack," he added.
"In September, the terror alert was raised to high for the first time ever and that followed the biggest ever counter-terrorism raids in Australia, which apparently thwarted an attempt to conduct public beheadings in Sydney.
"We still don't know who this man is, but images show a man in his 40s or 50s, which doesn't fit with the usual pattern of young and disaffected men who have gone off to Syria and Iraq," he said.
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