The man who attacked a Michigan synagogue was the brother of a Hezbollah commander killed earlier this month in an Israeli airstrike, Israel’s military said on Sunday.
Ibrahim Ghazali was killed in the March 5 strike in Lebanon along with three other relatives of the attacker in Michigan — a week before authorities allege Ayman Ghazali drove his car into a major synagogue outside Detroit and killed himself after security fired at him.
The FBI’s Detroit office, which is investigating the synagogue attack, declined to comment on the claims by Israel’s military about Ibrahim Ghazali.
Photo: Reuters
“Out of respect for the ongoing investigation, we will continue to refrain from commenting on its substance,” FBI spokesman Jordan Hall said in an e-mail on Sunday.
The Israeli military alleges Ibrahim Ghazali was a Hezbollah commander who managed weapons for a unit that fired rockets at Israel.
A Lebanese official, who requested anonymity because he could not publicly discuss details of the airstrike, has confirmed Ibrahim Ghazali’s death.
The official said that Ibrahim Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, and brother, Kassim, were also killed in the strike that struck their home just after sunset.
In a statement, Hezbollah said that the brothers, Ibrahim and Kassim Ghazali, were a referee in a local soccer league and a scout member, and they were targeted at home along with their children, but did not explicitly deny that Ibrahim Ghazali was in the group.
Authorities have said that Ayman Ghazali, 41, carried out the synagogue attack after learning that four of his family members were killed in the Israeli strike.
Israel has stepped up attacks on the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as the war with Iran has spread violence across the Middle East.
Ayman Ghazali on Thursday last week waited in his car outside Temple Israel, near Detroit, for about two hours with a rifle, commercial grade fireworks and jugs of liquid believed to be gasoline, before crashing into the building full of dozens of children, authorities said.
He started firing his gun through the windshield, exchanging fire with an armed security guard.
Ayman Ghazali fatally shot himself after he got stuck in his vehicle and the engine caught fire, said Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office.
No staffers or children inside the synagogue were hurt, likely due to beefed up security.
The FBI, which is leading the investigation, described the attack on one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community, but the agency said that it did not have enough evidence yet to call it an act of terror.
Ayman Ghazali moved to the US in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a US citizen and was granted US citizenship in 2016, the US Department of Homeland Security said.
He lived in a single-story brick home in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights about 60km south of the synagogue.
The attack on the Michigan synagogue took place on the same day as a former Army National Guard member who served years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State group opened fire on a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia, killing one person and wounding two others.
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