JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military claimed Sunday that the man who attacked a Michigan synagogue was the brother of a Hezbollah commander killed earlier this month in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, according to the report.
The Israeli military said Ibrahim Ghazali was killed in the March 5 strike in Lebanon along with three other relatives of the attacker in Michigan. The report said the attack in Michigan was carried out by Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, after authorities alleged he 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 Israeli military’s claims about Ibrahim Ghazali. FBI spokesman Jordan Hall said in an email Sunday: “Out of respect for the ongoing investigation, we will continue to refrain from commenting on its substance.”
The Israeli military alleged Ibrahim Ghazali was a Hezbollah commander who managed weapons for a unit that fired rockets at Israel. A Lebanese official, speaking to AP on condition of anonymity because the official said they could not publicly discuss details of the airstrike, confirmed Ibrahim Ghazali’s death and said the strike also killed Ibrahim Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, and his brother, Kassim. The official told AP the strike hit their home just after sunset.
In a statement sent to AP in Beirut, Hezbollah said that Ibrahim and Kassim were described as a referee in a local soccer league and a scout member, and that they were targeted at home along with their children. Hezbollah did not explicitly deny, in the statement as reported, that Ibrahim Ghazali was part of the group.
Authorities said Ayman Ghazali carried out the synagogue attack after learning that four of his family members were killed in the Israeli strike. On Thursday, AP reported, Ayman Ghazali 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, according to authorities.
AP reported that he started firing his gun through the windshield and exchanged fire with an armed security guard. Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office, said Ghazali fatally shot himself after he got stuck in his vehicle and the engine caught fire.
Runyan said no staffers or children inside the synagogue were hurt, likely due to beefed up security in recent months. The FBI 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 it did not have enough evidence yet to call it an act of terror.
AP reported that Ghazali came to the U.S. in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, and that the Department of Homeland Security said he was granted U.S. citizenship in 2016. The report said he lived in a single-story brick home in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of the synagogue.
The report said the Michigan synagogue attack took place on the same day as a shooting at a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia, where a former Army National Guard member who had served years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State group opened fire, killing one person and wounding two others.