Hostage Situation Under Way in Australia, Islamic Ties Suspected

Australian police are mounting a major operation in downtown Sydney in response to at least one armed man taking hostages inside a shop, with the regional police chief saying authorities are on “a footing consistent with responding to a terrorist event.” Three hostages, out of an undetermined number, have escaped so far.

Those inside the shop seem to have been forced to display an Islamist flag:

There was a brief sighting of one man inside the shop, wearing a black headband that appears to have Arabic writing on it:

There have been indications of growing jihadist strength in Australia for some time: In September, authorities broke up a ring of Sydney-based conspirators who had pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State and were were plotting a public beheading of a civilian. Australian prime minister Tony Abbott called the current situation “deeply concerning”; dozens of hostages may have been taken.

James Brown of the Lowy Institute noted on Australia’s ABC Radio that the obscurity of the target chosen, a chocolate shop, may indicate that the operation had been botched, because terrorists would be expected to go after a much more prominent target, associated with Western power, commerce, or sovereignty.

The flag in the window may look familiar to those who have been following the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but it isn’t the flag of that organization specifically. It’s a black banner with the Islamic declaration of faith (the shahada) in white used by Islamist militants everywhere; the flag used by al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State is slightly different and includes a circular seal. (The writing on the man’s headband may be the shahada, too.)

While details remain scant, there may well be a connection to the Islamic State. Australian counterterrorism forces disrupted a beheading plot tied to the Islamic State and arrested 15 men, in raids involving 800 officers, back in September. The beheading plot may even have involved the downtown location where the hostage taking happened today, Martin Place. At the time, Tom Rogan noted that the incipient plot, and the Australian response, indicated that the Islamic-terror threat in the country is being taken very seriously. The Australian government alluded to direct incitement to attacks from Islamic State members in Turkey and Syria, which may have included a former Sydney imam who’s become quite senior in the group.

Tom’s whole piece is here.