A brief hostage situation at Lebanon's BLOM Bank (BLOM.BY) ended on Wednesday when an apparently armed woman and her associates left the bank carrying more than $13,000 in cash from her own account, a source from a depositors' advocacy group said.
Shortly thereafter, an armed man entered a branch of Bankmed in Lebanon's mountain city of Aley and attempted to retrieve his trapped savings, the advocacy group Depositors Outcry, sources said.
Lebanon's banks have locked most depositors out of their savings since a financial crisis took hold three years ago, leaving much of the population unable to pay for basic needs, and the government has so far failed to address the crisis.