A Lebanese woman robbed a Beirut bank on Wednesday and apparently escaped with thousands of dollars that she said will finance her sick sister's hospital treatment.
Sali Hafiz broadcast live video of the robbery in which she can be heard yelling at bank employees to give her the money while the bank's doors are locked.
"My name is Sali Hafiz, I came today (...) to collect the deposits of my sister who is dying in the hospital,"
she says in the video.
"I have not come to kill anyone or start a shootout (...) I have come to claim my rights," she adds.
Lebanon has recorded a series of robberies of clients whose savings were devalued and blocked in banks for almost three years due to the country's serious economic crisis.
The woman immediately became a hero on social media in Lebanon, where many are desperate for their money and angry at the banking sector, which they perceive as corrupt.
A second woman who appears in the video claims they had raised more than $13,000.
Another man standing behind him carried what looked like wads of bills rolled up in plastic.
An AFP correspondent at the scene said that gasoline was doused inside the bank during the robbery.
A gun was also found on the ground, although it was not immediately clear if it was real.
The correspondent said that Hafiz and his alleged accomplices managed to escape through a broken window before the security forces arrived.
The robbery lasted less than an hour.
Last month, a Lebanese man aroused sympathy after holding up a Beirut bank with a rifle and holding up employees and customers for hours to get some of his $200,000 in frozen assets to pay his ailing father's hospital bills.
The man was arrested but quickly released.
In January, another client held dozens of people in eastern Lebanon after learning he couldn't withdraw his savings in foreign currency.
Local media reported that he finally got some of the savings from him and turned himself in to the security forces.
Lebanon plunged in 2019 into its worst economic crisis.
The local currency lost almost 90% of its value on the black market and poverty and unemployment skyrocketed.
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