sydney. we thank you again. and it s interesting, isn t it, john, that police aren t saying much at all, but this man, whoever he is, has reached out to the media and maybe this is the point. sorry. didn t mean to interrupt. but maybe this is the point, that the police don t want him getting his message out and they ve managed to stop him at every turn. he contacted a radio station, two tv stations, and it s only now, nine hours into this that really his demands, his message is actually getting out there. well, hopefully they do have a plan, they re working on this to figure out how to bring it to a successful conclusion. but so far, again, no one has been hurt. so thank goodness for that. we want to talk now on the phone with tiffany gender. she s a police reporter with 2gb radio. several of the hostages called into that radio station. so tiffany, what more can you add as far as what these hostages were relaying? what was their demeanor? what information did they give you about
citizens who happen to be in sydney for pretty much for everyone who is there. concerning this situation ongoing in the world. witnesses to what s going on there at the cafe say australians are wandering around the streets with looks of disbelief. listen to what some people had to say near the scene. kind of a bit weird. like i ve never seen anything like this happen. like it s probably the first time in australian history that something this major in regards to a terrorist threat has happened. it is worrying me, actually. as you know, as me as a muslim i feel because it don t represent me. and if he think that he s a muslim he s doing the right thing, then he s very bad. because that s not us. that s not the muslims doing this. that s why i m worrying. if he think that he is what he s doing is islam then he s definitely wrong and everyone has to stand against him. people in australia shocked about what s going on.
that it is not actually it s not actually come as a huge surprise to many here in sydney. you may or may not know that we had a series of terrorism raids across the western area of sydney just a few months ago in september. and that actually led to a raising of the terror level threat here across australia from medium to high. the central part of that raid in september was an allegation that was later reported that there was a plot to kidnap someone from this very spot, from martin place. the allegation that was widely reported was that once that person was kidnapped they were going to be beheaded. now, the washout from that was a lot of people actually cast doubt on these claims and said was that really a reality, was that something that really could happen here in central sydney? and i think what we ve seen today is very much it is.
providing some operational details. we have learned a lot more about what has been going on in sydney over the last ten hours or so. we understand there s more than a dozen people being held hostage inside this cafe, that the guy with the gun has made contact with three media organizations, making a number of demands. among them he wants an isis flag, he wants contact with the man you just saw there, tony abbott, the australian prime minister. he s also making these claims that there are two explosive devices, two bombs inside the cafe none of that confirmed. yeah. somewhere in the cbd. we ve also seen over the course of the last few hours five people managing to escape from inside this cafe. yeah, we have. and we have the compelling pictures of the women who left the building with the lindt apron. five total. we still don t know how they were able to get out.
i just want to make a short statement on the hostage incident in martin place in sydney. new south wales police responding. they are being strongly supported by commonwealth agencies. we don t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator. we don t know whether this is politically motivated. although obviously there are some indications that this could be. we have to appreciate that even in a society such as ours there are people who would wish to do us arm. that s why we have police and security organizations of the utmost professionalism that are ready and able to respond to our whole range of situations and contingencies including the situation that we are now seeing in sydney. the whole point of politically