Heavily armed police moved in shortly after 2 a.m. local time (1500 GMT) on Monday to end the hostage-taking at the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in central Sydney.

Heavy gunfire and loud bangs were heard as the police made their move. Video footage broadcast on news channels showed apparent hostages running out of the building. At least one woman, though, was not able to walk out herself and was carried out by what appeared to be paramedics. At least one other person was wheeled away on a stretcher.

A few minutes later, Australian police confirmed that they had ended the siege after the hostages had been held at gunpoint for more than 16 hours.

In the couple of hours before police stormed the cafe, information emerged about the identity of the gunman.

Police identified him as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian refugee who is facing criminal charges in a number of separate cases, including sexual assault and accessory to murder. He was out on bail when he seized the hostages at the cafe on Monday.

At one point he forced hostages to hold up a black flag inside one of the cafe's window. The flag featured Arabic script, which was different but in the style of the flag used by "Islamic State" militants, who have seized large swathes of territory in northern Iraq and Syria in recent months.

While the hostage-taker's motives and affiliations were not immediately clear, many experts have raised the possibility that he was acting on his own. Australian media have reported that both he and one hostage were killled. Police, however, have declined to comment on the reports.

There had been growing fears of some sort of attack by Islamists in Australia for more than a year, with the country's security agency having raised its national terror alert to "high" back in September.

pfd/cb (Reuters AP, dpa)