FBI investigating shooting at Temple Israel Synagogue near Detroit
The gunman is dead after a shooting at a synagogue in the Detroit area.
The Israeli military says the brother of the man who attacked a synagogue in Michigan last week was a Hezbollah commander and was recently killed in an airstrike.
Ibrahim Mohammad Ghazali, the brother of synagogue attacker Ayman Mohammad Ghazali, was killed in an Israeli Air Force airstrike in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Sunday.
The Trump administration and U.S. law enforcement officials have not released information about Ayman Mohammad Ghazali’s brother. The FBI did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.
One of Ghazali’s neighbors told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, that the attacker’s brother was killed in the airstrike. Mo Baydoun, the mayor of Dearborn Heights, where the suspect lived, said in early March that he had “lost several members of my family, including my niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on my home in Lebanon.”
Immediately after the war with Iran began on February 28, Israel launched attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon in response to attacks by Iranian-backed militants. Lebanon’s Health Ministry announced on March 14 that Israeli airstrikes have killed 826 people and injured more than 2,000 since the start of the conflict. Reuters, citing the Israeli ambulance service, reported that the Iranian attack killed 12 people in Israel.
Ayman Mohammad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, was born in Lebanon. A man died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound when he drove his truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, and during a shootout with two security guards, the truck burst into flames, FBI officials said.
One security guard was injured in the attack. All children and teachers at the temple school were safely evacuated.
Authorities have stepped up security around places of worship across the country in recent weeks as the war between the United States and Israel and Iran escalates.
Contributors: Andrea May Sahouri and Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press.
Kathryn Palmer is USA TODAY’s political reporter. She can be reached at the following address: kapalmer@usatoday.com And to X@Kathryn Purml. Sign up for her daily politics newsletter here.
