BEIRUT: A lady held up a Beirut financial institution Wednesday with a toy gun and walked out with hundreds of greenbacks to pay for remedy for her unwell sister, in a determined heist cheered via many in crisis-hit Lebanon. It used to be the newest in a sequence of heists in Lebanon, the place the financial savings of depositors were devalued and trapped in banks for just about 3 years amid a crippling financial disaster.
Sali Hafiz streamed a reside video on Fb of her raid on a Beirut department of Blom Financial institution, through which she might be heard yelling at staff to free up a amount of money whilst entrances to the financial institution had been sealed. “I’m Sali Hafiz, I got here these days… to take the deposits of my sister who’s loss of life in sanatorium,” she mentioned within the video. “I didn’t come to kill any individual or to begin a fireplace… I got here to assert my rights.”
In an interview with a Lebanese broadcaster after the raid, Hafiz mentioned she controlled to loose about $13,000 of the $20,000 she mentioned her circle of relatives had deposited. Most cancers remedy for her sister prices $50,000, she mentioned. An AFP correspondent on the scene mentioned fuel have been poured within the financial institution all the way through the heist, which lasted below an hour. Hafiz instructed media shops she had used her nephew’s toy pistol for the hold-up.
Hafiz and suspected accomplices escaped thru a smashed window in the back of the financial institution earlier than safety forces arrived, the AFP correspondent mentioned. She used to be nonetheless at the run, in line with her kin, whilst Lebanon’s Common Safety company disregarded rumors she had fled the rustic. Additionally on Wednesday, a person held up a financial institution within the town of Aley northeast of Beirut, the reliable Nationwide Information Company reported. He used to be arrested, the inside track company added, with out specifying if he had taken any cash.
Hafiz is a 28-year-old activist and inside clothier, mentioned Zeina, who’s one Hafiz’s 5 sisters. She mentioned the circle of relatives had now not been involved with Hafiz because the heist and used to be now not interested in its making plans. “She is sought after via government,” Zeina instructed AFP. Hafiz immediately changed into a folks hero on social media in Lebanon, the place many are determined to get right of entry to their financial savings and livid at a banking sector perceived as a corrupt cartel.
Footage and photographs of her status on a table within the financial institution wearing a gun went viral on social media. “Thanks,” one Twitter person wrote. “Two weeks in the past I cried at Blom Financial institution. I wanted the cash for a surgical operation. I’m too susceptible to carry a gun and take what’s mine.” Ultimate month, a person gained popular sympathy after he stormed a Beirut financial institution with a rifle and held staff and shoppers hostage for hours to call for a few of his $200,000 in frozen financial savings to pay sanatorium expenses for his in poor health father. He used to be detained however unexpectedly launched.
In January, a financial institution buyer held dozens of other people hostage in jap Lebanon after he used to be instructed he may just now not withdraw his foreign exchange financial savings, a supply on the lender mentioned. Native media reported that the client used to be ultimately given a few of his financial savings and surrendered to safety forces. Lebanon has been battered via its worst-ever financial disaster since 2019. Its forex has misplaced greater than 90 % of its worth at the black marketplace, whilst poverty and unemployment have soared. – AFP