A Lebanese woman held up a bank in Beirut with a toy pistol demanding her own savings to pay for her sister’s cancer treatment.
Sali Hafiz barged into Blom Bank in the Sodeco neighbourhood to get $13,000 (£11,255) from her trapped savings yesterday morning.
She told Al-Jadeed TV she repeatedly visited the bank, only to be told people can only withdraw $200 to $400 per month due to limits set by the banks.
With the country’s economic freefall throwing three-quarters of people into poverty, the maximum withdrawal is barely enough to cover costly basic supplies.
Nadine Nakhal, a bank customer, claimed other intruders also ‘doused gasoline everywhere inside and took out a lighter and threatened to light it’.
Hafiz leapt onto the bank counter and demanded her money in full as members of the Depositors Outcry Association, a group protesting bank rules, argued with bank tellers.
Speaking about her desperate actions, Hafiz said: ‘I had begged the branch manager before for my money, and I told him my sister was dying, didn’t have much time left. I reached a point where I had nothing else to lose.’
She live-streamed the entire incident on Facebook, filming bank staff counting banknotes and handing over bundles of US dollar bills to her.
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‘I did not break into the bank to kill anyone or set the place on fire. I am here to get my rights,’ Hafiz said, stressing she had borrowed a toy gun from her nephew.’
Security forces lined up outside did not arrest Hafiz. Several activists, one of whom reportedly carried a handgun, were detained.
‘I have never reached this point of despair,’ Hafiz wrote on Facebook on Monday. She also shared a photo of her sister lying in a hospital bed.
After grabbing her savings, she announced she was flying to Turkey.
‘The whole government is under my house, and I’m at the airport’, she said. ‘See you all in Istanbul, Ciao!’
Last month, Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein was briefly arrested for holding up a Beirut bank and demanding his $35,000 to pay for his father’s cancer treatment.
The head of Depositors’ Outcry has vowed to organise more bank heists.
Alaa Khorchid told The Associated Press: ‘We’re organising more than this, and you have no choice. People’s rights are sacred.’
Ibrahim Abdullah, a member of the Depositors’ Outcry group said at the press conference: ‘The real beginning of the revolution started yesterday, when Sali Hafiz entered the bank, and there is no turning back. This revolution is against all the banks.’
Lebanon’s fragile economy has been in freefall since 2019 and its currency has lost more than 90% of its value.
This has closed like a vice on families as they watch their money plummet in value while everything around them costs more and more each day.
The World Bank has warned the financial collapse could rank among the world’s worst since the mid-1800s, while healthcare is also taking a beating.
Four in 10 doctors and nurses have left the country, while private hospitals with threadbare budgets have shut down departments such as for cancer and heart disease.
People in Lebanon often have to pay upfront for medical care, a rule that adds to their problems.
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