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1 Aug, 2015

Queensland quake

Natural Disaster0 Comments

An earthquake measuring 5.7 on the richter scale strikes off the coast of Queensland about 110km east of Fraser Island at 1.38pm. Following this, there is another quake of 5.2 magnitude at 2.46pm in the same area as the first earthquake and then finally an aftershock measuring 3 at 4.30pm. There is no tsunami alert and there is no damage to property or life. The tremor is felt from Bundaberg to the Gold Coast. It is the strongest quake to hit Queensland since 1918.

26 Jul, 2015

Passengers survive plane crash

Plane Crash0 Comments

A single-engine Piper Cherokee 6 crashes into a lake in Queensland. All six people including the pilot are alive. One woman has a back injury. The plane hit a downdraft and rapidly lost altitude before crashing on to the lake. Local Resident:

I drove out and I saw a plane in the middle of the lake. It was sitting on the surface. I saw the doors being pushed open. I saw people falling out of the plane into the water. Then within five minutes the plane started to sink nose first.

25 Jul, 2015

Daughter sees shark kill father

Animal Attack0 Comments

A great white shark kills a man as his daughter watches, while they are diving for scallops off the coast of Tasmania. After returning to the boat with some of the catch, the daughter looks back for her father, and sees a large shark attacking him. The woman sets off a flare and makes an emergency phone call, prompting other boaters to respond. The type of shark is not identified. This is only the fifth fatal shark attack “since convict times”. Police:

[The man] did not return to the surface [and] his daughter became worried and went down and checked on her father. She saw a very large shark and she saw her father being attacked by the shark…They pulled up the [man] using the air hose that he was attached to, but unfortunately he was fatally injured

18 Sep, 2014

Top ISIS member connected to plot

Terror Incident0 Comments

Court documents connect the man believed to be Australia’s most senior ISIS member to the alleged plot to kidnap and execute members of the public in Sydney and Brisbane. Court documents show that 22-year-old Omarjan Azari of Guildford, Sydney, the first person to be charged in connection with the plot, is alleged to have conspired with Mohammad Ali Baryalei, who has been identified in an arrest warrant as the top recruiter for ISIS of Australians fighting for the group in Iraq and Syria.

Sydney man charged with terror conspiracy

Terror Incident0 Comments

22-year-old Omarjan Azari is accused in Sydney’s Central Local Court of conspiring to act in preparation or plan a terrorist act or acts. He is one of 15 mostly Afghan Australians arrested earlier Thursday in an alleged plot to carry out executions in Sydney and Brisbane. The court is told the charges against Azari stem from a single phone call intercepted earlier in the week. Commonwealth prosecutor Michael Allnutt:

It’s been an immediate reaction to a clear, imperative danger

He does not apply for bail, and the case is adjourned until November 13.

15 arrests in beheading plot

Terror Incident0 Comments

Australian counterterror officials arrest 15 people alleged to be involved in a plot to carry out beheadings of random people kidnapped off the streets in Sydney and Brisbane. The raids of more than a dozen properties across 12 Sydney suburbs by around 800 federal and state police officers are Australia’s biggest ever operation.

12 Sep, 2014

Raises terror threat to ‘High’

Terror Incident0 Comments

Australia raises its terror threat level to High from Medium at the advice of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organization (ASIO), indicating that an attack is considered ‘likely’ but not imminent.

Abbott:

We have no specific intelligence of a particular plot. What we do have is that there are people with the intent and capability to mount attacks.

11 Sep, 2014

Severed head photo

Terror Incident0 Comments

isis-khaled-sharrouf-photoSharrouf tweets a photo apparently showing his seven-year-old son holding the decapitated head of a Syrian soldier. Caption:

That’s my boy

In the photographs featuring Sharrouf and his son the heads are blackened and bloated, having been dead for a week.

9 Sep, 2014

Identified as top ISIS member

Terror Incident0 Comments

isis-mohammad-baryaleiAn investigation by ABC’s 7:30 program identifies 33-year-old Mohammad Ali Baryalei from Sydney as Australia’s most senior ISIS member. Baryalei is from an aristocratic Afghan family that came to Australia as refugees as a child, and has worked as a security guard in King’s Cross and made a brief appearance as an extra on the true crime show Underbelly. Police say that in 2013 he traveled to Syria to fight with extremist groups and has since become the top recruiter of Australians to ISIS, involved in its operational command in Syria and Iraq as a facilitator for Australians traveling to join jihad. Baryalei in an intercepted phone call with his handler in Sydney:

Four brothers coming this week. They are leaving Australia. Going to try to get them by the weekend. Abu Qaqa is the tall one that was doing Dawah with you. … The brothers yesterday, they were crying, affected, none of them wanted to stay in this country one second.