A 41-year-old man was killed on Thursday after ramming his pickup truck into a synagogue on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, causing a blaze and triggering a huge police response.
US media reported the assailant had lost family members in an Israeli strike on Lebanon, as part of the ongoing Middle East war.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security identified the assailant as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, who was born in Lebanon and came to Detroit in 2011 on a visa granted to spouses of US citizens, and became a US citizen himself in 2016.
Photo: AFP
Security guards opened fire on Ghazali after he smashed a truck through the doors of the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told reporters.
At a news conference on Thursday evening, Bouchard said no synagogue staff or children were hurt in the attack, but 30 law enforcement officers were “taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation” after the evacuation efforts.
Earlier he said that one security guard was injured by the assailant’s truck.
The FBI are to investigate the incident “as a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office, told reporters.
Law enforcement have not yet publicly detailed a motive.
US President Donald Trump called the attack “terrible.”
A neighbor told the Detroit Free Press newspaper that Ghazali “recently lost family in an Israeli strike in Lebanon.”
A source in Michigan’s Lebanese American community also told CBS News the strike occurred “roughly 10 days prior” and “killed several of his family members, leaving him devastated.”
The attack comes amid heightened security across the US following the launch two weeks ago of the US-Israeli war on Iran, a conflict that has since broadened to the Middle East.
In Lebanon on Thursday, authorities said that 687 people have been killed by Israel’s attacks, while Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz said that those strikes were “expanding.”
The synagogue attack also came on the same day as a shooting at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, which FBI Director Kash Patel said was being investigated as “an act of terrorism.”
Patel, in a social media post, said that the university attack left one person dead and two others wounded.
“The shooter is now deceased thanks to a group of brave students who stepped in and subdued him,” he said.
That suspect was later identified as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former member of the National Guard who pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State.
Bouchard said the Michigan assailant rammed the Temple Israel building with his vehicle and then drove down a hallway, where he was engaged by security guards.
“We can’t say what killed him at this point, but security did engage the suspect with gunfire,” he said.
He added that the assailant appeared to be alone in the vehicle and that police dogs were checking the truck for explosives.
“It’s been complicated because there’s some fire,” he said. “We’re through an abundance of caution, clearing the vehicle for IEDs [improvised explosive devices] or any explosives.”
Smoke could be seen billowing from Temple Israel, one of the largest Reform Judaism congregations in the nation, after the attack.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer condemned what she called a “heartbreaking” attack.
“Michigan’s Jewish community should be able to live and practice their faith in peace,” she said. “Anti-Semitism and violence have no place in Michigan.”
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