The gunman stormed the bank branch at noon, demanding money from his frozen deposits. “He came in with a shotgun and flammable materials and threatened the employees to give him their savings,” according to a witness reported by the Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The hostage thriller in a Beirut bank, where a Lebanese man held hostages for almost six hours, had a happy ending. As reported by the Reuters agency, the gunman left the bank with his hands up. None of the six hostages were injured, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.
The gunman stormed the bank branch at noon, demanding money from his frozen deposits. “He came in with a shotgun and flammable materials and threatened the employees to give him their savings,” according to a witness reported by the Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Lebanese NNA news agency reported that the man “threatened to set himself on fire after killing everyone”, while at one point he “pointed his gun at the manager’s head”.
According to NNA, he broke into the bank because his father had recently been admitted to the hospital for surgery and was unable to meet the financial costs. “My brother has $210,000 in the bank and he only needs $5,000 to pay the hospital bills,” Atef al-Sheikh Hussein had told reporters earlier, adding that his brother intended to surrender once he got his money.
In a video posted online, negotiators can be seen asking the gunman to release two bank customers.
For three years now, Lebanon has been going through one of the worst economic crises in modern world history, according to the World Bank. The national currency has lost almost 90% of its value and around 80% of the population has been plunged into poverty, while strict capital controls have angered the Lebanese.
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