The man who attacked a Michigan synagogue was the brother of a Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier this month, the Israeli military claimed Sunday.
Ibrahim Ghazali was killed in Lebanon on March 5 along with three relatives of the Michigan attacker. It was a week before authorities allege Ayman Mohammad Ghazali drove his car into a major synagogue outside Detroit and killed himself after a guard opened fire.
The FBI’s Detroit office, which is investigating the synagogue attack, declined to comment on the Israeli military’s claims against Ibrahim Ghazali.
“Out of respect for the ongoing investigation, we will continue to refrain from commenting on its contents,” FBI spokesman Jordan Hall said in an email Sunday.
The Israeli military claimed that Ibrahim Ghazali was a Hezbollah commander who managed the weapons of the unit that fired rockets at Israel.
A Lebanese official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the strike, confirmed the death of Ibrahim Ghazali. The official told The Associated Press that Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, and younger brother Qasim were also killed in the airstrike that struck their home shortly after sunset.
Hezbollah said in a statement to The Associated Press from Beirut that brothers Ibrahim and Qasim were referees and scouts in a local soccer league and were targeted at their home with their children, but did not explicitly deny that Ibrahim was with the group.
Authorities said Ayman Ghazali, 41, carried out the attack on the synagogue after learning that four of his family members had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
As the war with Iran spread violence across the Middle East, Israel intensified its attacks against the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Authorities say Ayman Ghazali waited for about two hours in his car outside Temple Israel near Detroit Thursday with a rifle, commercial fireworks and a jug of liquid believed to be gasoline before crashing it into a building with dozens of children inside.
He began shooting through the windshield and engaged in a shootout with an armed security guard. Ghazali fatally shot himself after he was trapped in his vehicle and the engine caught fire, said Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office. No staff or children inside the synagogue were injured due to increased security in recent months.
The FBI, which is leading the investigation, called the attack on one of the largest Reform synagogues in the country an act of violence targeting the Jewish community. However, the agency said there was not yet enough evidence to classify this as an act of terrorism.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Ghazali came to the United States in 2011 on a direct relative visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and became a U.S. citizen in 2016.
He lived in a one-story brick home in Dearborn Heights, a Detroit suburb about 40 miles south of the synagogue.
The attack on the Michigan synagogue occurred on the same day that a former Army National Guard member who served several years in prison for supporting the Islamic State group opened fire in a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia, killing one person and wounding two others.
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