Cameraman who captured Sydney siege describes frightening ordeal
A cameraman who was given an exclusive view into the Sydney cafe at the centre of a 16-hour siege has described the "frightening" moment police stormed the building.
Greg Parker stayed with police snipers inside the Channel 7 newsroom - positioned opposite the Lindt cafe - throughout the attack, helping to provide senior officers with regular updates.
Recalling the point when the siege came to a violent end, Parker said: "We heard a shot... he [a police officer] confirmed hostage down window two.
"Six seconds later we saw the special forces guys breach.
"It was pretty loud, pretty frightening - like nothing I'd ever seen before ever."
He revealed that the 50-year-old gunman, Man Haron Monis, paced around the cafe in a "intimidating, angry and threatening manner" throughout the attack, becoming increasingly agitated when some hostages managed to escape.
Parker said he would never forget seeing the terror on the faces of the hostages.
"It was genuinely horrible," he said, "in 20 years its very rare to come across such upsetting footage when there's nothing you can do."
"The thing that keeps going through my mind the most is the look of anguish on those faces of those people," Parker said.
"One of the hardest things to see was those three women forced to hold that flag up against the glass, and another image of a poor guy in obvious distress with a shotgun being pointed at his head," he said.
Mr Parker praised the courage of the police officers who confronted the gunman "with no fear for their own safety to get people out", adding that he was "in awe" of how they dealt with the situation.
"They [the police] were not going to sit around and wait for another hostage to have the same fate."