Lebanese Man Surrendered After Held A Bank Hostage

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A Lebanese man who had held six people hostage at gunpoint inside a commercial bank in Beirut for around six hours exited the bank on Thursday evening, a Reuters journalist said.

He lifted his hands in salute as he exited the bank accompanied by security forces. No hostages appeared to be harmed, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.

The armed man demanding deposits frozen by his bank took five branch employees and one customer hostage on Thursday at the Federal Bank of Lebanon, branch manager Hassan Halawi, who is among those being held, told Reuters.

The man entered the Federal Bank of Lebanon branch in the Hamra neighbourhood in west Beirut just before noon on Thursday armed with a firearm, the security source told Reuters.

"He demanded access to around $200,000 he had in his bank account. When the employee refused the request, he began screaming that his relatives were in the hospital. Then he pulled out the gun," the source said.

Lebanese banks have limited withdrawals of hard currency for most depositors during the country's three-year financial meltdown, which has left more than three-quarters of the population struggling.

Since Lebanon's financial crisis took hold in 2019, many commercial banks have frozen clients out of their hard currency through informal capital controls.

They cap monthly cash withdrawals in U.S. dollars and allow other limited amounts to be withdrawn in Lebanese pounds at a rate much lower than the parallel market rate - resulting in a significant cut in the original value of the deposits.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/armed-man-demanding-frozen-deposits-takes-hostages-lebanese-commercial-bank-2022-08-11/

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gunman-exits-lebanon-bank-ending-hostage-situation-2022-08-11/

 

Sad situation all around

 

[weed 78,948]

King behavior in my eyes, it's literally his own fking money. The employees don't deserve to feel scared, but.. wtf is he/others gonna do? just watch his family die?

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1 minute ago, weed said:

King behavior in my eyes, it's literally his own fking money. The employees don't deserve to feel scared, but.. wtf is he/others gonna do? just watch his family die?

True. Hope he won't get arrested.

 

[alsemanche 97,801]

33 minutes ago, weed said:

King behavior in my eyes, it's literally his own fking money. The employees don't deserve to feel scared, but.. wtf is he/others gonna do? just watch his family die?

All of this. 

This happened like 5 minutes away from my apartment

We've had similar incidents before in the past 2-3 years and they're fully justifiable. Our money is literally being stolen from us and somehow we're expected to remain 'civil' and not do anything that might harm banks, which is laughable. Back when people were attacking banks and putting them on fire, they were also demonized for being violent, which is also laughable. Idk how we're expected to remain peaceful and just sit around while we get starved and slowly killed every single minute of the day.