Free Republic

Terror in Sydney As Gunman Takes At Least 13 Hostages At Lindt Cafe, forces crying women to hold black Islamic flag against the window and 'demands to speak to Tony Abbott' By EMILY CRANE and SARAH DEAN and LOUISE CHEER and DANIEL PIOTROWSKI and CANDACE SUTTON 14 December 2014 | UPDATED: 21:56 EST, 14 December 2014 Witnesses described how a man wearing a headband covered in Arabic walked into the Lindt cafe in Martin Place and produced a shotgun from a blue bag at around 9.45am. Shortly afterwards hostages were seen with their hands pressed against the windows holding up...

This story is breaking now. Live stream here. “A man is holding several people hostage at Martin Place cafe,” News.com.au, December 15, 2014 (thanks to Jill): AT LEAST one armed man is holding several people hostage at a cafe in Martin Place in Sydney. There are hostages standing with their hands up at the windows in the popular Lindt chocolate shop, which has two or three entrances. There is also a black and white flag being held up in a window. It is believed to be the Black Standard, a jihadist flag. Staff in shop aprons can be seen with...

A hostage has been forced to hold up an Islamic State flag in the window of a shop in Martin Place that is currently under siege. It is believed there are 12 hostages in the store and an ISIS flag has been placed in the window. Martin Place is the main financial area of the Sydney CBD.

A British-born U.S. photojournalist and a South African aid worker held hostage in Yemen by al Qaeda militants have been 'murdered' in a failed rescue attempt. American citizen Luke Somers had been held hostage since September 2013 in Yemen's capital Sana'a having moved to the country two years earlier. The 33-year-old was reportedly shot by his captors as Navy SEAL Team six, made up of around 40 men, carried out a dramatic rescue bid in the Wadi Abdan region of the southern Shabwa province late on Friday night. It is the second attempted extraction by special forces in as many...

BREAKING NEWS: The sister of American hostage Luke Somers says he was killed in a failed rescue mission in Yemen. Lucy Somers said: "We ask that all of Luke's family members be allowed to mourn in peace."

<p>This is perhaps the most elaborate and graphic of all the murder videos posted online by IS.</p> <p>Much of it is taken up with a recent history lesson on Iraq and Syria as seen through the eyes of the jihadists. But the latter part shows a mass beheading of Syrian prisoners in revolting, lingering detail.</p>

Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate is using terrorist brinkmanship to threaten India and undermine Nawaz Sharif. It’s time to stop this dangerous game. Just when you thought the world was dangerous enough, another crisis between nuclear-weapons-armed India and Pakistan is brewing, and now al Qaeda is adding fuel to the fire by calling for jihad in the subcontinent. Tensions have been growing all summer long, even though, ironically, things began on a positive high note: in June, newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swept into power on a landslide, invited his Pakistan counterpart, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to his...

(CNN) -- Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller have been allowed to leave North Korea "and are on their way home," the U.S. government announced Saturday, leaving no more Americans detained in the reclusive East Asian nation. The pair were released after a rare, last-second trip by a top American official -- U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper -- to Pyongyang as an envoy of President Barack Obama, a senior State Department official told CNN.

Vali Reza Nasr, a senior Obama administration advisor on Iran, has come to Iran. Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani and former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel may be behind the visit. "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was informed well after Nasr entered the country," Tabnak reported on Wednesday. Nasr was appointed senior advisor to Richard Holbrooke -- the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tabnak and Fararu claim the unannounced trip by the US official to be linked to the recent release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.

Thousands of Iranians chanted “Down with America” at a major anti-U.S. rally on Tuesday marking the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, just days ahead of a key meeting between the two nations’ top diplomats over Iran’s controversial nuclear program. The gathering outside the former embassy compound in Tehran, which has become the annual venue for rallies commemorating the embassy attack and other American-bashing protests, was smaller compared to last year’s event, which drew tens of thousands – a sign of improved Iran-U.S. relations since moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took office last year. But...

Peter Kassig, the latest hostage to be threatened with murder by Islamist extremists, is an American veteran who served in Iraq and whose decision to convert to Islam in captivity has so far failed to save his life. His parents, Ed and Paula Kassig, remained silent for the past year in the hope their son's life would be spared but issued a statement after the video was released. They said their son had become a Muslim during his time in captivity, changing his name to Abdul-Rahman Kassig, and that they had learned from other hostages that his faith had brought...

Former President Jimmy Carter marked his 90th birthday Wednesday with a lengthy interview on CNBC Meets where he discussed his one term in office and the one thing he would have handled differently — the Iran Hostage Crisis. Carter suggested Operation Eagle Claw, a failed 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages taken by Iranian revolutionaries at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, could have been successful if he committed one more helicopter to the mission. "I think I would have been re-elected easily if I had been able to rescue our hostages from the Iranians," said Carter. "And everybody asks me...

A French tourist captured in North Africa by a group aligned with the Islamic State is seen beheaded in a video circulated on Wednesday, according to SITE Intelligence, which tracks jihadist groups. The Frenchman — Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was abducted in Algeria on Sunday by the terrorist group, known as Jund al-Khilafah. Mr. Gourdel had arrived only a day before on a trip to go hiking in Algeria’s northern mountains.

Pro-ISIS fighters in Algeria released a video today of a hostage who was kidnapped this weekend. The hostage delivered a message to President Francois Hollande: “I am in the hands of Jund al-Khilifa, an Algerian armed group. This armed group is asking me to ask you (President Francois Hollande) to not intervene in Iraq. They are holding me as a hostage and I ask you Mr President to do everything to get me out of this bad situation and I thank you.” The pro-ISIS group gave France twenty-four hours to stop “the aggression against ISIL” or they will behead their...

When American journalist Theo Curtis was released in the Golan Heights late last month after being held in Syria by an Islamist group for nearly two years, a pair of FBI agents were waiting for him. One of the agents called Curtis’s mother to tell her that her son was finally safe. That moment was a high point — not only for Curtis’s family but also for the FBI agents based in the Washington field office working on the abduction. The FBI “deserves some credit for what it did for me,” Curtis said in an interview. (snip) The killings by...

After the administration released details of the July mission to rescue journalist James Foley and others in Syria, intelligence suggests ISIS dispersed the remaining hostages to multiple locations, making them harder to locate, a military source told Fox News. In addition, the source added guard forces around the hostages doubled while widely publicized reporting about the scope of new aerial surveillance in the region caused ISIS to change its pattern of behavior on the ground. "Any time you (disclose) very highly sensitive tactical information, you're giving away your road map if you will, your strategy," said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas,...

The UN Security Council on Wednesday demanded the release of 45 Fijian peacekeepers held in the Golan Heights by Syrian Al-Nusra Front terrorists, according to AFP. The 15 members of the council unanimously approved a declaration condemning "in the strongest terms" the detention of the Fijians. They were captured almost a week ago, when the rebels stormed a Golan Heights crossing. The council "reiterated their call for the peacekeepers' immediate and unconditional release," adding in its statement that "there can never be any justification for attacks on or the detention of UN peacekeepers." The government of Fiji also has called...

James Foley was one of a new breed of activists calling themselves journalists. He didn’t travel to report on a story, but to promote an agenda. And the agenda was obvious from his Twitter feed.Any human life lost is tragic, but a moral individual would have much more empathy for the Syrian Christians who suffered at the hands of Foley’s favorite Jihadists than one of their pet propagandists. Foley came to Syria to support the Sunni Islamist rebels against the Syrian government.He cheered on the Sunni Muslim terrorists fighting to ethnically cleanse the Christians of Aleppo. In the conflict...

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think a lot of Americans watching that execution set-up we were just witness to, they would like to push the button and have all of the people killed. They can't stand what they saw. This will cause rage in this country to see the way they did this... No matter how we get into this, it is Obama's war now. I think he is saying that himself right there. They decapitated this guy on tape to get even with him for starting the war on ISIS. He's coming back. And we also have at least one other...

Senior Obama administration officials say the U.S. military launched a secret mission earlier this summer to rescue a number of Americans held captive by militants in Syria but failed to find them.