8 children killed in Australia in reported mass stabbing

SYDNEY  -- Eight children have been killed and a woman who was mother to seven of them was injured in the northern Australian city of Cairns, police said on Friday, in what several media outlets reported was a mass stabbing.

Australia is in a state of heightened alert after police stormed a Sydney cafe early on Tuesday to end a 16-hour hostage standoff in which three people were killed, including the hostage-taker.

Queensland state police said in a statement they were called to a house in the Cairns suburb of Manoora just before midday after reports of a woman with serious injuries on the premises.

They found the bodies of the children, aged between 18 months and 15 years, when they were examining the location.

Detective Inspector Bruno Asnicar said police believed the woman was the mother of seven of the children.

"There is no formal suspect," Asnicar told reporters.

"We are talking to a range of people. Anybody who has had any involvement in the past two or three days is a person of interest," he said.

The woman, aged 34, was receiving treatment for her injuries, police said, and was assisting them with their investigation.

Forensics officers have locked down the scene and there has been no formal identification of the children.

While unrelated to the mass stabbing in tropical Cairns, the Sydney siege has triggered an outpouring of grief, with shocked Australians laying thousands of bouquets of flowers at a makeshift shrine in a central city mall near the siege cafe.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott called the events in Cairns "heartbreaking" and acknowledged that these were "trying days" for Australia.

"All parents would feel a gut-wrenching sadness at what has happened. This is an unspeakable crime. Tonight, there will be tears and prayers across our country for these children," he said in a media release.

Police in Cairns urged calm.

"There is no need for the public to be concerned about this, other than it is a tragic, tragic event," Asnicar said.

"The situation is well controlled at the moment and there shouldn't be any concerns for anyone else," he said.

Specialist officers were being sent from Brisbane, the state capital, to assist with the investigation, Asnicar said.

Media outlets reported that the neighbourhood was predominantly inhabited by indigenous Aboriginal Australians, and was known by residents to have a high crime rate.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Solidarity for Australian Muslims after Sydney siege

SYDNEY, Australia - One of the bouquets left on Tuesday in a sea of flowers at the site of the Sydney siege read "I will ride with you." It was as much a wholehearted message to Australia's Muslim community as to the incident's victims.

Those words are the theme of a Twitter campaign of solidarity, offering to accompany any Muslims who fear venturing onto public transport at this time, in case of a public backlash after Monday's deadly cafe siege by an Iranian-born extremist.

The campaign has raised hopes that Australia, a nation forged by waves of immigration down the decades, will be drawn together by the tragedy and not torn apart.

Mirella Rigo, overcome with emotion, rushed through the crowd of people paying their respects on Tuesday morning to embrace a Muslim woman at a makeshift memorial near the Lindt cafe in downtown Sydney's Martin Place.

"It's heartfelt," she said. "I feel for these people. I think to make them see they are not responsible for this."

Mariam Veiszadeh, from the Islamophobia Register which collates reports of anti-Muslim sentiment, told AFP she had been touched by the reaction from ordinary Australians.

"The tragedy that unfolded in Sydney yesterday has really brought Australians together -- irrespective of our backgrounds, religious or racial identities," she said after placing flowers at the Martin Place memorial.

"And I'm really hoping that we take this feeling throughout the rest of the week."

The 490,000-strong Muslim community has been battling the emergence of Islamic State this year and its growing impact on disenchanted youth, who have been targeted in sophisticated social media drives to radicalise them.

Some have succumbed and fled to Syria and Iraq while more than 70 others have had their passports confiscated, sparking fears over possible attacks on Australian soil, with IS leaders calling online for public beheadings or executions.

After counter-terror raids in September, there was a backlash that saw several mosques vandalised. Anxious to contain any damage from Monday's tragedy, more than 40 Muslim groups quickly issued a statement decrying extremists "who seek to destroy the goodwill of the people of Australia".

- 'A sick individual' -

The hostage-taker was widely identified as a self-styled Islamic cleric called Man Haron Monis. He had displayed an Arabic flag during the siege, and was killed along with two of his 17 hostages as police stormed the cafe early on Tuesday.

Officials said he had no clear links to Islamic State or other jihadist groups, but was rather a mentally unstable man with extremist views and a history of violence.

Australia's race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane said he was heartened by the Twitter campaign, adding: "Let's not allow fear, hatred and division to triumph."

The mood was set by the Twitter hashtag #illridewithyou, which Tessa Kum tweeted on Monday to counter concern about an anti-Muslim backlash. Tens of thousands have tweeted their support.

Kum said she had been inspired by another commuter.

"She'd done a very simple thing -- she had seen a distressed Muslim woman on a train take off her hijab and had approached that woman at the train station and simply said, "Put it back on, I'll walk with you". That broke my heart a little bit," Kum told ABC radio.

So far, there has been little public criticism of Muslims although the Queensland president of the anti-immigration One Nation party took aim at Islam.

"Already the Islam apologetics on national TV are trying to suck up to Muslims and are telling us this is just a lone gunman, a 'lone wolf' and nothing to do with Islam," Jim Savage told reporters.

Neil Fergus, chief executive of risk consultancy Intelligent Risks, who has been working with the Muslim community, said that of all the Muslims in Australia, an estimated 250 or fewer were considered a concern by authorities.

"The Muslim community has pulled together in a remarkable way and people are expressing sympathy," he told AFP.

"He (Monis) was clearly a risk to the community, but not because he had direct links with Islamic State. He was a sick individual."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Hostages held in Sydney cafe, forced to hold Islamic flag in window

SYDNEY - Australian police locked down the center of the country's biggest city on Monday after an armed assailant walked into a downtown Sydney cafe, took hostages and forced them to display an Islamic flag, igniting fears of a jihadist attack.

Police said they knew of one armed assailant involved in the incident at the Lindt chocolate cafe in the heart of Sydney's financial district, but there could be more.

Police, including heavily armed paramilitary officers, cordoned off several blocks around the cafe as negotiators tried to defuse one of the biggest security scares in Australia for decades. Snipers and a SWAT team could be seen taking up positions around the cafe and police helicopters flew overhead.

At least five hostages have escaped since the mid-morning siege began. It was not clear how many more hostages remained in the cafe but it was not as high as the 30-40 that had been reported earlier, police said.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has warned of militant plans to strike Australian targets, said there were indications the hostage situation at the cafe was politically motivated.

"This is a very disturbing incident. I can understand the concerns and anxieties of the Australian people," Abbott told reporters in Canberra, without providing any information on the siege.

Australia, a staunch ally of the United States and its escalating action against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, is on high alert for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East.

"We have moved to a footing that would be consistent with a terrorist event," Andrew Scipione, police commissioner for the state of New South Wales, told reporters in Sydney.

The cafe was directly opposite a commercial television studio and footage earlier showed several people inside the cafe standing with their hands pressed against the windows.

Pictures showed a black and white flag similar to those used by Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria being held up by what appeared to be a staff member and another woman. Local media reports said the flag was the Shahada, a general expression of faith in Islam, a translation of which is: "There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah."

The incident forced the evacuation of nearby buildings in Sydney's central business district and sent shockwaves around a country where many people have started to turn their attention to the approaching Christmas festive season following earlier security scares.

In September, Australian anti-terrorism police said they had thwarted an imminent threat to behead a random member of the public and days later, a teenager in Melbourne was shot dead after attacking two anti-terrorism officers with a knife.

EVACUATING BY LADDER

Dozens of heavily armed police surrounded the cafe in Martin Place after the siege began around 9:45 a.m. local time. The area is home to the Reserve Bank of Australia, commercial banks and close to the New South Wales state parliament.

"I walked up to the door and then everyone was sitting down and the door's locked which is pretty weird because it's never locked and there was one guy walking around with a hat and a beard," a man who identified himself as Bruno, a worker at the cafe, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp, referring to the suspected assailant. He said he then turned away.

Several hours into the siege, police led about two dozen people out of a building opposite the cafe and through the cordon. Others were evacuated from the building above the cafe by ladder, television pictures showed.

Earlier, Lindt Australia Chief Executive Steve Loane told Sky Business there were about 10 staff working at the cafe and "probably 30 customers" although he said that figure was an estimate.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said staff had been locked down inside the building, and were all safe and accounted for.

The nearby U.S. consulate was also evacuated, according to an embassy spokeswoman, along with the Sydney Opera House. Tourists were being let back into the world-famous venue by early afternoon.

BANKS AND SHOPS CLOSE
Major banks closed their offices in the central business district and people were told to avoid the area. Shops in a four block radius were shut, leaving large parts of the CBD all but deserted by mid-afternoon.

Traders in currency markets said the hostage news may have contributed to a dip in the Australian dollar, which was already under pressure from global risk aversion as oil prices fell anew.

Ray Hadley, a popular radio jockey, said he had been contacted by a hostage and could hear the suspected gunman issuing orders in the background. Police declined to comment on Hadley's claim.

Concerns about an attack in Australia by radical Islamists have been growing for more than a year, with the security agency raising its national terrorism public alert to "high" in September.

That month, a spokesman for the Islamic State urged supporters in Western nations, including Australia, to attack civilians or military personnel at home.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com