AP News
By KAREEM CHEHAYEB and FAY ABUELGASIM
August 11, 2022
BEIRUT (AP) — A Lebanese man with a shotgun and a gasoline canister took up to 10 people hostage at a Beirut bank Thursday and threatened to set himself on fire unless he was allowed to withdraw his trapped savings to pay his father’s medical bills, authorities said.
Soldiers and police converged on the city’s bustling Hamra district and sought to negotiate an end to the standoff, the latest painful episode in Lebanon’s economic free-fall, now in its third year. The country’s cash-strapped banks since 2019 have slapped strict limits on withdrawals of foreign currency assets, tying up the savings of millions of people.