An attacker armed with a rifle rammed his vehicle into a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., on Thursday before being killed by the temple’s security staff, authorities say.
Multiple media outlets identified the suspect as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen. The Associated Press reported that Ghazali had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week.
Authorities have not publicly identified the suspect’s motive, but the FBI is investigating the incident as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office, said during a press conference on Thursday evening.
None of the people inside Temple Israel, including 140 children who were at the synagogue’s on-site child care center, were seriously injured or killed in the incident. “Everyone is safe,” the synagogue wrote in a social media post several hours after the attack.
The suspect’s car caught fire inside the building, causing a blaze that resulted in 30 first responders being hospitalized with smoke inhalation. A member of the temple’s security staff, who was knocked to the ground by the suspect’s vehicle, was also taken to the hospital with what are believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released a statement expressing her concern for those involved.
“This is heartbreaking. Michigan’s Jewish community should be able to live and practice their faith in peace,” she wrote. “Antisemitism and violence have no place in Michigan. I am hoping for everyone’s safety.”
Synagogues in the Detroit area were placed on temporary lockdown. Police in New York City and Washington, D.C., increased their patrols around Jewish cultural institutions out of an abundance of caution in the hours after the attack.
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