Hostage standoff at Beirut bank ends with gunman’s arrest

By KAREEM CHEHAYEB and FAY ABUELGASIM
Associated Press

BEIRUT (AP) — A hostage standoff in which a gunman demanded a Beirut bank let him withdraw his trapped savings has ended with the man’s surrender, and the bank handing over a reported $35,000 to his brother. Authorities say 42-year-old Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein entered a bank branch in Beirut on Thursday with a shotgun and a canister of gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire unless he was allowed to take out his money. None of the hostages were injured. The hostage drama in the city’s bustling Hamra district was the latest painful episode in Lebanon’s economic free-fall, now in its third year.