First and explosion then gunfire. Two officers have been shot trying to storm the Brighton apartments in Victoria
Australian police said today that a shootout in Melbourne in which two men died, three police officers were wounded and a female hostage was freed was being treated as a terror attack.
Victoria state Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said the gunman had been implicated in a thwarted suicide attackat a Sydney army barracks in 2009. "We are treating it as a terror attack," he added.
Instances of terrorism in Australia:
JUNE 5: A man was shot dead in the foyer of a Brighton serviced apartment by a gunman, named in the media as Yacqub Khayre. He was holding a prostitute hostage before opening fire on police who shot him dead.
2016, SEPTEMBER 10: Ihsas Khan, 22, was charged with committing a terrorist act and attempted murder after stabbing 57-year-old Wayne Greenhalgh several times at a park in Minto.
2015, OCTOBER 2: Fifteen-year-old Farhad Jabar killed 58-year-old police accountant, Curtis Cheng, in a shooting outside the Parramatta police headquarter before he was shot dead by officers.
2014, DECEMBER 15: Self-proclaimed Muslim sheikh, Man Haron Monis, took 17 people hostage inside Sydney's Lindt cafe. Hostages Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson died while another four people, including a police officer, were injured.
SEPTEMBER 23: Numan Haider, 18, stabbed two officers outside Endeavour Hills police station before he was shot dead.
2009, AUGUST: Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, Saney Edow Aweys and Nayef El Sayed were jailed in 2011 for 18 years with a minimum of 13-and-a-half-years over a plot to kill as many people as possible in a mass shooting at Holsworthy Army base in south west Sydney.
