The attack on a major Reform synagogue outside Detroit has prompted scrutiny in the United States and raised fresh questions abroad after Israel’s military said the attacker’s brother was a Hezbollah figure killed during fighting in Lebanon. On Sunday, Israel’s military claimed that Ibrahim Ghazali was a Hezbollah commander, an allegation that Israel tied to its broader campaign against the Iranian-backed group.
Israel’s military said Ibrahim Ghazali was killed on March 5 in Lebanon in an Israeli airstrike that also killed three other relatives of the attacker in Michigan, according to the AP report. The claim appeared days after U.S. authorities identified Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, as the man who drove into the synagogue and killed himself after security fired at him.
The FBI’s Detroit field office, which is investigating the synagogue attack, declined to comment on Israel’s military account of Ibrahim Ghazali. In an email to the AP on Sunday, FBI spokesman Jordan Hall said, “Out of respect for the ongoing investigation, we will continue to refrain from commenting on its substance.”
In the same AP report, a Lebanese official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss details of the airstrike confirmed Ibrahim Ghazali’s death to the AP. That official said Ibrahim Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, and his brother, Kassim, were also killed when the strike hit their home just after sunset.
Hezbollah, in a statement sent to the AP in Beirut, said Ibrahim Ghazali and Kassim were a referee in a local soccer league and a scout member, and it said they were targeted at home along with their children, but did not explicitly deny that Ibrahim was in the group. Israel’s military, by contrast, alleged that Ibrahim Ghazali managed weapons for a unit that fired rockets at Israel.
U.S. authorities have said Ayman Ghazali carried out the synagogue attack after learning that four of his family members were killed in the March 5 Israeli strike. On Thursday, the AP report said, authorities described how Ghazali waited outside Temple Israel for about two hours with a rifle, commercial grade fireworks and jugs of liquid believed to be gasoline before crashing into the building and firing through the windshield.
The FBI said Ghazali exchanged fire with an armed security guard and then fatally shot himself after he got stuck in his vehicle and the engine caught fire, according to Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office. Authorities said no staffers or children inside the synagogue were hurt, which the report said was “likely due to beefed up security in recent months.”
In its characterization of the attack, the AP report said the FBI described the incident as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community but said it did not have enough evidence yet to call it an act of terror. The renewed focus on Hezbollah stems from Israel’s assertion that the attacker’s brother had a role within the group, while the U.S. investigation continues to proceed without confirming Israel’s claim.
The AP report also said Ghazali came to the United States in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and received U.S. citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Ghazali lived in a home in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of the synagogue, the report said.
As the U.S. investigation moves forward, the attack comes amid other incidents also reported on March 14, including an Old Dominion University shooting in Virginia involving a former Army National Guard member. This story has continued to draw attention to security and risk faced by houses of worship, following MSI previously reported that a synagogue ambush heightened fear for houses of worship worldwide earlier this month.