Law enforcement vehicles parked outside Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on 13 March 2026, after Ghazali drove a vehicle into the building. [Getty]
A man with a rifle who crashed into a large Michigan synagogue in what federal officials are saying was an attack had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an official said Friday.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalised US citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit and driving down a hallway in a vehicle that then fire, according to authorities.
The FBI, which is leading the investigation, described the attack on one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.
The synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at its early childhood center were not injured, according to Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.
Ghazali came to the US in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a US citizen and was granted US citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
An Israeli airstrike killed four people in the eastern Lebanon town of Mashgharah on 5 March, Lebanon’s state agency and the Lebanese Health Ministry reported. A woman was also wounded.
The ripple effects of the Iran war have spread across the Middle East. Israel has stepped up its attacks on Lebanon following renewed strikes with the Iranian-backed militantgroup Hezbollah.
A local official in Mashgharah told The Associated Press that Ghazali’s two brothers and a niece and nephew were killed at their home in the airstrike just after sunset as they were having their fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The official, who requested anonymity because he could not publicly discuss details of the airstrike, told the AP that Kassim and Ibrahim Ghazali were killed, along with Ibrahim Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima. Ibrahim Ghazali’s wife was seriously wounded and remains in the hospital, the official said.
The official said that Kassim Ghazali was a well-known football coach and personal trainer while Ibrahim was a school bus driver in the village.
The official said that Ayman Ghazali’s father was in the US and returned to Lebanon recently.
In the minutes after the attack, smoke billowed from the synagogue. One security officer was hit by the vehicle and knocked unconscious but did not suffer life-threatening injuries, Bouchard said. And 30 law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.
Synagogues around the world have been on edge and ramping up security since the US and Israel launched a war with Iran with missile strikes on 28 February.
The attack was the second at a house of worship in Michigan within the past year. Last September, a former Marine fatally shot four people at a church north of Detroit and set it ablaze. The FBI later said he was motivated by “anti-religious beliefs” against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Oakland County is Michigan’s second-largest county with roughly 1.3 million people. The majority of Detroit-area Jewish residents live there. Temple Israel has 12,000 members, according to its website.
(Associated Press)
