Terror is in the heart of Sydney right now.
オーストラリアの最大都市 シドニー中心部の繁華街にあるカフェで、何者かが人質を取って立てこもる事件が発生しています。事件が起きる直前にコーヒーをtake awayで買ったオーストラリアン紙の記者がレポートを打電しました。Terror is in the heart of Sydney right now.という表現が生々しく響きます。（Astroriver）
Lindt cafe siege: How Martin Place siege horror unfolded before me
THE scene inside the Lindt cafe at 9.35 this morning was typical — as I gathered my takeaway coffee office workers sat around tables chatting.
By the time I finished a radio chat from the seats outside in Martin Place five minutes later, a horrific situation had unfolded.
Three motorcycle police arrived and a woman still clasping her mobile phone to her ear was telling them about a gunman inside.
She had tried to enter the cafe just after I had walked out but the automatic sliding glass doors were shut.
Initially she thought the cafe was closed but saw a man with a blue bag and what she thought was a shotgun.
As police quickly swarmed and cleared the area, I turned to see a man against the window, facing out with his hands raised.
At first I was relieved, thinking this was the gunman responding to police — but soon came the awful realisation that customers were being forced against the windows.
From the outset the suggestion of a hold-up seemed remote — a cafe at 9.30am in the middle of the city seemed an unlikely target.
Police said little but pushed shoppers and commuters back as onlookers strained to seen what was going on.
Within 10 minutes car-loads of police were on the scene, wearing bullet-proof vests and some with handguns drawn. They were telling their colleagues that specialist officers were on the way.
Soon traffic along Elizabeth and Phillip streets was blocked, rail traffic through Martin Place station was halted and a massive emergency operation was under way.
My fellow customers — fellow Australians — are now in a horrific situation, the sliding doors of the cafe playing a brutal game of chance and fate in Sydney today.
It is a central, busy location, above a crucial train station and across the road from a television network newsroom — whoever has unleashed this was not after cash but impact.
Terror is in the heart of Sydney right now.
