BEIRUT —
A woman held up a
Beirut bank Wednesday with a toy gun and walked out with
thousands of dollars to pay for treatment for her ill sister, in a desperate
heist cheered by many in crisis-hit Lebanon.
اضافة اعلان
It was the
latest in a series of heists in Lebanon, where the savings of depositors have
been devalued and trapped in banks for almost three years amid a crippling
economic crisis.
Sali Hafiz
streamed a live video on Facebook of her raid on a Beirut branch of Blom Bank,
in which she could be heard yelling at employees to release a sum of money
while entrances to the bank were sealed.
“I am Sali
Hafiz, I came today ... to take the deposits of my sister who is dying in
hospital,” she said in the video.
“I did not come
to kill anyone or to start a fire. ... I came to claim my rights.”
In an interview
with a
Lebanese broadcaster after the raid, Hafiz said she managed to free
about $13,000 of the $20,000 she said her family had deposited.
Cancer treatment
for her sister costs $50,000, she said.
An AFP
correspondent at the scene said gasoline had been poured inside the bank during
the heist, which lasted under an hour.
Hafiz told media
outlets she had used her nephew’s toy pistol for the hold-up.
Hafiz and
suspected accomplices escaped through a smashed window at the back of the bank
before security forces arrived, the AFP correspondent said.
She was still on
the run, according to her relatives, while Lebanon’s General Security agency
dismissed rumors she had fled the country.
Also on
Wednesday, a man held up a bank in the city of Aley northeast of Beirut, the
official National News Agency reported.
He was arrested,
the news agency added, without specifying if he had taken any money.
‘Thank you’
Hafiz is a 28-year-old activist and interior designer, said Zeina who
is one Hafiz’s five sisters.
She said the
family had not been in touch with Hafiz since the heist and was not involved in
its planning.
“She is wanted
by authorities,” Zeina told AFP.
Hafiz instantly
turned into a folk hero on social media in Lebanon, where many are desperate to
access their savings and furious at a banking sector perceived as a corrupt
cartel.
Pictures and
footage of her standing on a desk inside the bank carrying a gun went viral on
social media.
“Thank you,” one
Twitter user wrote. “Two weeks ago I cried at Blom Bank. I needed the money for
a surgery. I am too weak to hold a gun and take what is mine.”
Last month, a
man received widespread sympathy after he stormed a Beirut bank with a rifle
and held employees and customers hostage for hours to demand some of his
$200,000 in frozen savings to pay hospital bills for his sick father.
He was detained
but swiftly released.
In January, a
bank customer held dozens of people hostage in eastern Lebanon after he was
told he could not withdraw his foreign currency savings, a source at the lender
said.
Local media
reported that the customer was eventually given some of his savings and surrendered
to security forces.
Lebanon has been
battered by its worst-ever economic crisis since 2019. Its currency has lost
more than 90 percent of its value on the black market, while poverty and
unemployment have soared.
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