The images of these robberies with new motivations are hardly believable.
Lebanon has been hit by a series of bank robberies this week, including five on Friday alone.
Many savers are desperate faced with the impossibility of withdrawing their savings blocked for three years in this country ravaged by an unprecedented economic crisis.
A total of seven robberies took place in two days in different parts of the country.
Since 2019, Lebanon has been plunged into a deep economic crisis blamed by a large part of the population on the mismanagement, corruption, negligence and inertia of a ruling class in place for decades.
The crisis was characterized by draconian banking restrictions preventing savers from having free access to their money, while the local currency lost more than 90% of its value against the dollar on the black market.
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Lebanon: A woman robs a bank to pay for the care of her sister with cancer
On Wednesday, the robbery led by a young Lebanese woman storming a bank in Beirut to recover her frozen savings to pay the hospitalization costs of her sister suffering from cancer, had a snowball effect.
That same day, a man robbed another bank in the town of Aley, northeast of the capital.
On Friday, three other robberies were recorded, including two in Beirut and one in the south of the country.
Early in the morning, a 50-year-old man and his 20-something-year-old son broke into a branch of Byblos Bank in Ghaziyeh, southeast of southern Lebanon's main city of Saida, an official said. police source on condition of anonymity and a security guard who witnessed the incident.
In debt, they want to withdraw their frozen savings
The man threatened bank workers with a gun, which a local TV station said was fake, demanding the withdrawal of his frozen savings since the bank collapse, which caused one of the worst economic crises world since 1850 according to the World Bank.
"He emptied a can of gasoline on the floor, causing panic in the bank," said a security guard.
Two other banks were stormed a few hours later in Beirut.
In the neighborhood of Tarik Jdide, the security situation was tense after a man locked himself inside a branch of the Blom Bank with police, said witnesses gathered in the street.
According to them, he is an indebted trader who is demanding the withdrawal of his frozen savings and is unarmed.
Closure of all banks next week
Three kilometers further, in the district of Ramlet al-Bayda, a man armed with a shotgun stormed a branch of the Lebanon & Gulf Bank, residents told a photographer on the spot.
Last month, a saver was cheered by crowds after he burst into a bank in Beirut, claiming, gun in hand, his more than 200,000 euros in savings, to pay for his father's hospital bills.
The bank ended up giving him almost 30,000 euros and he surrendered to the authorities.
He was not prosecuted.
Faced with the multiplication of these incidents, the Minister of the Interior called an emergency meeting on Friday “to take the necessary security measures”.
Read alsoIn Lebanon, plunged into the midst of an economic crisis, the situation is getting “out of control”
The Association of Banks of Lebanon (ABL) has also called an emergency meeting while decreeing a general closure of all branches for three days next week.
For its part, the main association of Lebanese savers expressed its support for the perpetrators of these robberies, saying that they face “injustice and oppression”.
According to the World Bank, the Lebanese authorities have squandered savers' deposits for the past 30 years thanks to a Ponzi scheme.
This method - a scam consisting in remunerating existing investors with the funds provided by new entrants - has benefited the main political and economic players to the detriment of households, says the World Bank, which denounces a "deliberate depression".