Michigan synagogue attacker’s brother was Hezbollah commander, IDF says

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A brother of the man accused of attacking a Michigan synagogue on Thursday had been a Hezbollah commander who was killed in an air strike last week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says.

Police say Ayman Muhammad Ghazali died after driving a car full of explosives into the Temple Israel synagogue. Members of his family, including two brothers, had reportedly been killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon in March.

The IDF said his brother Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali had managed weapons operations for the Badr Unit in Hezbollah, a political and military group in Lebanon.

The BBC has not independently confirmed the brother’s identity and has contacted the US Department of Homeland Security and FBI.

Israel’s military said in its post on X on Sunday that Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali was a “Hezbollah terrorist” who commanded a unit responsible for “launching hundreds of rockets toward Israeli civilians throughout the war”.

He was “eliminated” in an Israeli Air Force strike on a Hezbollah military structure last week, the IDF said.

CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, said that a freelance journalist working for it in Lebanon was told by sources that both brothers killed in the strike were members of a Hezbollah rocket unit in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the US, the UK and other countries.

Police have not yet identified a motive for the attack on Temple Israel by Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalised US citizen who came from Lebanon in 2011 and resided in Dearborn Heights.

He had recently suffered “devastating and personal losses overseas”, said Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun, who added that it was “not an excuse” for the attack.

On Friday, the FBI said Ghazali died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a gunfight with police.

They also said he had large quantities of commercial-grade fireworks and several jugs of flammable liquid in the bed of his truck, which ignited during the attack.

No staff or children at the synagogue and its school were hurt in the incident. A security guard was injured but is expected to recover, and around 30 law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation, the local sheriff said.

The FBI has said it is investigating the incident as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community”.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said at a press briefing following the attack that antisemitism is at a “historic high”.

“It’s why I am calling on anyone with a platform to be very responsible with their rhetoric, not to identify or target the Jewish community. That is antisemitism writ large,” she said.

“That’s why I’m asking people to turn down the rhetoric,” she added.

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