The lady mentioned she wants the cash to fund her sister’s most cancers therapy, witnesses mentioned.
Armed with a handgun, she and the activists entered the BLOM Financial institution department and stormed into the supervisor’s workplace, they mentioned.
“They doused gasoline all over the place inside, and took out a lighter and threatened to gentle it,” Nadine Nakhal, a buyer on the financial institution, advised The Related Press. She mentioned the armed girl threatened to shoot the supervisor if she didn’t obtain her cash.
The activists accompanying the girl have been from a bunch referred to as Depositors’ Outcry. Some entered the financial institution together with her, whereas others staged a protest on the entrance. The lady ultimately left with money in a plastic bag, witnesses mentioned.
Safety forces standing outdoors arrested a number of of the activists, together with a person carrying a handgun.
The incident occurred weeks after a meals supply driver broke into one other financial institution department in Beirut and held 10 folks hostage for seven hours, demanding tens of hundreds of {dollars} in his trapped financial savings. Most hailed him as a hero.
Lebanon has scrambled for over two years to implement key reforms in its decimated banking sector and financial system. It has to this point failed to achieve an settlement with the Worldwide Financial Fund on a restoration program that may unlock billions of {dollars} in worldwide mortgage and support to make the nation viable once more.
Within the meantime, thousands and thousands are struggling to deal with rampant energy outages and hovering inflation.
“We have to put a cease to all the pieces that’s occurring to us on this nation,” Nakhal mentioned. “Everybody’s cash is caught within the banks, and on this case, it’s somebody who’s sick. We have to discover a answer.”
