Bank heists trending in Beirut

In what is starting to look like a trend, a Lebanese woman successfully held up a Beirut bank on Wednesday.

Accompanied by activists and brandishing what she later said was a toy gun (and possibly gasoline), Sali Hafiz demanded she be allowed to withdraw money from her own account. She left the bank with the equivalent of $13,000, and told the media that previous attempts to take out money to pay for her sister’s cancer treatment had been unsuccessful.

Hafiz wasn’t even the only person to hold up a bank in Lebanon that day, but she went viral fast. Some are hailing her as a folk hero in a country where banks have imposed strict limits on withdrawals of foreign currency due to a massive economic collapse.

Food delivery driver Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein took hostages at a Beirut bank a month ago, releasing them after seven hours in exchange for $35,000 of his savings, which he said he needed to pay his father’s medical bills.

Hussein emerged from that heist as an emblem of the frustration many feel in a country that can’t provide basic services anymore: Just this week Lebanon stopped subsidising fuel, after a gradual and painful withdrawal.