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with an australian with an australian tinge. that s what we know. and we ve also been told police know who they re dealing with, but they re not letting us know that. earlier we spoke with roger shanahan. he s a former australian army colonel. he s a middle east expert and a fellow at the middle east center for policy. he thinks the hostage taker chose his location for maximum international impact. here s his comments. it s going to be very difficult obviously to determine what the whole purpose of this was until we find out more about the hostage taker, but i think the fact that the cafe in question is directly opposite one of the major television stations in sydney, it s done right in nearly the dead center of australia s largest city in the central business district, all of these point to the fact that the person in question wanted maximum exposure not only nationally but internationally. and putting up that flag with ....
By doing that. but there s a little bit of detail about what can be seen at this time in the siege. that was before they evacuated the network and well, actually, what they have done is i think the timing on that is that they did evacuate the network and the police took over that building because it is line of sight directly across from the coffee shop. chris mentioned right at the end they did allow them back in to make that report. i see. but hundreds of people who work at channel 7 in that building. most of those people, pretty much all of them had in fact been evacuated. we saw earlier tonight we were broadcasting from their melbourne studios because they had to leave their sydney studios. and they were the first network to give us these pictures you re seeing here of people in the windows and also of the suspected gunman. reporter glenn conley describes what he saw. reporter: our camera was trained on the front door of the lindt cafe, and we had quite a long lens on ....
It was very early this morning into the pace that my radio station day radio was contacted by one of the hostages. a phone call was made to one of our announcers. that seemed to be the first contact that anyone had from inside the lindt cafe. now, that hostage i guess was relaying demands from this armed g gunman to the media. that message was disseminated. it went really wide. i guess that was the aim of the man he has since contacted, other media outlets on orders of the gunman i guess to try and get those demand out there. we have been told that the gunman has encouraged people to use their phones and social media, which is unusual, as you stated there. the demands we understand, so far, the list involves a proper ....
The initial reports we got this morning were there were around 13 hostages being held. that number has crept up very slightly. and we think the latest information we have is there might be around 15. in terms of the perpetrator here, i don t think it s too helpful to speculate at moment as to who he is or where he s actually from. we don t actually yet know his motives apart from the obvious banner that he has put in the cafe. that would hint at a sort of background as to where he s coming from. nevertheless, it pears he s acting alone and he is acting in terms of sort of his mental state perhaps not from a very good place. but the thing you have to remember with all of this is ....
Most reports are they escaped. it wasn t a negotiation release. we don t know. although tony abbott said the police would bring us an update, they are not forthcoming. they like to control the situation as best they can. all is taking place in the lindt chocolate coffee shop. it is a popular place in the morning, especially when the siege began. the company put a statement out on facebook and addressed the situation. it read in part we would like to thank everyone for this kind support for the situation at the lindt chocolate cafe at martin place. we are deeply concerned over this serious incident and our thoughts and prayers are with the staff and customers involved and all of their friends and families. we don t know how many people left in the coffee shop are workers or employees of the ....