After a 16-hour siege, commandos finally stormed the Lindt Chocolat Cafe involved in the Sydney hostage crisis to put an end to the incident.

BBC.com reported that the Islamist hostage take and two of the hostages died while four people were injured during the incident. The two deceased are Lindt cafe manager Tori Johnson, 34 years old, and Katrina Dawson, a 38-year-old lawyer.

The gunman was identified as an Iranian refugee, Man Haron Monis, who walked into the cafe in Martin Place at around 10 a.m.

In 1996, Monis was given political asylum in Australia. He was on bail pending a number of charges, including being an accessory to his wife's murder, over 40 sexual and indecent assaults and sending offensive letters to the families of deceased Australian soldiers.

During the Sydney hostage crisis, the assailant compelled a few hostages to put up a black Islamic banner at the cafe window. Several hostages managed to exit the scene in the following hours.

The police and men from the Royal Australian Regiment circled the building for several hours, hoping for a peaceful ending to the incident. When the gunman began firing inside the cafe, the commandos rushed into the building.

Monis, Johnson and Dawson were pronounced dead after they were brought to a hospital. There were two women who acquired minor injuries. A third woman suffered a shoulder gunshot wound while a policeman was also injured in the face by pellets. There were a total of 17 hostages.

Andrew Scipione, New South Wales police commissioner mentioned that the case was an "isolated incident". He also asked people to avoid speculating about the incidents inside the building after the commandos entered. He said that the police believed that more people could have died if the commandos did not intervene when the shots were heard.

Lindt issued a statement, "We are devastated by the loss of their lives and that several others were wounded and had to experience such trauma."

Prime Minister Tony Abbott also described the Sydney hostage crisis as a "horrific incident" and "tragic beyond words". He added that there were lessons to be learned from the terrorist incident. According to Abbott, Monis had "sought to cloak his actions with the symbol of the ISIS [IS] death cult."

Abbott said, "These events do demonstrate that even a country as free, as open and as generous as ours is vulnerable to acts of politically motivated violence but they also demonstrate that... we are ready to respond."