By Ebi Kesiena
A Lebanese woman held up a Beirut bank on Wednesday and reportedly walked out with thousands of dollars to fund what she said was hospital treatment for her ill sister.
The move and another heist Wednesday come as Lebanese depositors whose savings have been devalued and trapped in banks for almost three years amid an economic collapse take matters into their own hands.
Sali Hafiz streamed a live video 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 the 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 local broadcaster after the heist, Hafiz said she managed to free around $13,000 from 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 local media she had used her nephew’s toy pistol for the hold-up.
Hafiz and suspected accomplices managed to escape through a smashed window out the back of the bank before security forces arrived, the AFP correspondent said.
