2014 Sydney hostage crisis
The 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, also known as the Sydney siege and Lindt Cafe siege, occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt chocolate café located at Martin Place in Sydney, Australia. Police treated the event as a terrorist attack at the time, but Monis' motives were subsequently debated. However, the findings of the Coroner in 2017 deemed the event to be a terrorist attack.
Siege of Sadr City
The Siege of Sadr City was a blockade of the Shi'a district of northeastern Baghdad carried out by U.S. and Iraqi government forces in an attempt to destroy the main power base of the insurgent Mahdi Army in Baghdad. The siege began on 4 April 2004 – later dubbed "Black Sunday" – with an uprising against the Coalition Provisional Authority following the government banning of a newspaper published by Muqtada Al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement. The most intense periods of fighting in Sadr City occurred during the first uprising in April 2004, the second in August the same year, during the sectarian conflict that gripped Baghdad in late 2006, during the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, and during the spring fighting of 2008.