Gun-toting Ali al-Sahli stormed BLC Bank’s branch in Chtoura, a town to the east of the capital Beirut, and took several employees hostage in a desperate effort to compel them to hand over his money. He was arrested.
"Ali al-Sahli who stormed a bank office in Chtoura has been arrested," the Depositors' Outcry Association said on social media.
Another angry depositor broke into a Byblos Bank branch in the city of Tyre to the south and demanded $44,000 in cash from his own savings to pay off loans. A group of utility workers in the country’s north stormed an FNB branch to retrieve their trapped wages on the same day.
The onslaught by depositors come a day after commercial banks reopened across the country under tight security rules following a string of break-ins by outraged depositors last month.
Cash-strapped Lebanon has been mired in economic and political crises since 2019 when its financial system caved in on itself under the weight of decades of economic mismanagement and corruption.