FLASH BRIEF - Deaths of two VICPOL detectives
Deadly rural ambush and siege situation currently underway - monitoring occurring
ONGOING - according to news outlets, two Victoria Police detectives have been killed, and a third officer possibly wounded whilst executing a warrant at a property in a rural area called Porepunkah, located approximately 300km north-east of Melbourne, Victoria.
The situation as of 1200 AEST remains ongoing with a siege containment currently occurring in nearby bushland. The elite-trained emergency response unit, the Special Operations Group (SOG) were activated and deployed to the region.
COMMENT The SOG are a contingency response measure for crisis situations that escalate beyond the scope and capability of general-duties police END COMMENT
New South Wales (NSW) - the state directly north of Victoria - have their own police units on the state border towns, ready to respond.
Multiple streams of reporting concur the warrant was in relation to a sexual assault offence.
Analyst Comment
Tragically, this incident bears similar hallmarks to the 2022 Wieambilla shootings, in which two Queensland Police Service (QPS) members were killed in an ambush setting on a rural property, whilst executing a welfare check.
Whilst that attack was a religiously motivated terrorist attack due to Christian fundamentalism, an intelligence gap currently exists for the motivation for this Victorian ambush.
More information to follow.