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 in Michigan and driving down a hallway in a vehicle that then caught fire, according to authorities.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
About 140 people – 106 children and more than 30 staff – were at the synagogue at the time of the attack, said Cassi Cohen, Temple Israel’s director of strategic development.<\/p>\n
None of them were injured, according to Oakland County sheriff Mike Bouchard.<\/p>\n
During a news conference on Friday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and US senator Elissa Slotkin praised Temple Israel’s private security for swiftly stopping the attack.<\/p>\n
“If they had not all done their jobs almost perfectly, we would be talking about an immense tragedy here with children gone,” Ms Slotkin said.<\/p>\n
Ms Whitmer urged Americans to “lower the rhetoric” amid what she called a rising wave of antisemitism.<\/p>\n
She said the children attending school at the synagogue were aged five and younger.<\/p>\n
“This is targeting babies who are Jewish,” Ms Whitmer said. “That is antisemitism at its absolute worst.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
An Israeli airstrike killed four people in the eastern Lebanon town of Mashgharah on March 5, Lebanon’s state agency and the Lebanese Health Ministry reported. A woman was also wounded.<\/p>\n
The ripple effects of the Iran war have spread across the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Israel has stepped up its attacks on Lebanon following renewed strikes with the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
A local official in Mashgharah said 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.<\/p>\n
The official said Kassim and Ibrahim Ghazali were killed, along with Ibrahim Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim Ghazali’s wife was seriously wounded and remains in the hospital.<\/p>\n
The official said that Kassim Ghazali was a well-known soccer coach and personal trainer while Ibrahim was a school bus driver in the village.<\/p>\n
The official said that Ayman Ghazali’s father was in the US and returned to Lebanon recently.<\/p>\n
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, Mr Bouchard said. Thirty law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.<\/p>\n
Ms Cohen was in the hallway where the crash happened. She described hearing a loud bang and said she grabbed a few staff members, ran into her office and locked the door.<\/p>\n
“When I heard the crash, I knew it was bad,” Ms Cohen said.<\/p>\n
She said the crash happened near a classroom and, in addition to the children, there were also more than 30 staff members in the synagogue.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Arianna Gordon, from Temple Israel, thanked the security team, law enforcement and early childhood teachers for getting the children out safely and reunited with their parents.<\/p>\n
About a dozen parents sprinted to get their children soon after authorities cleared the building.<\/p>\n
Other families were reunited at a nearby Jewish Community Centre.<\/p>\n
Allison Jacobs, whose 18-month-old daughter is enrolled in Temple Israel’s day care, said she got a message from a teacher saying the children were OK even before she knew what happened.<\/p>\n
“There are no words. I was in complete and utter shock,” she said.<\/p>\n
Synagogues around the world have been on edge and ramping up security since the US and Israel launched missile strikes against Iran on February 28.<\/p>\n
The FBI has warned that Iranian operatives may be planning drone attacks on targets in California.<\/p>\n
Two men brought explosives to a far-right protest outside the New York mayoral mansion on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Investigators allege they were inspired by the Islamic State extremist group.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump called the attack a “terrible thing”.<\/p>\n
The attack was the second at a house of worship in the state of Michigan within the past year.<\/p>\n
Last September, a former Marine fatally shot four people at a church north of Detroit and set it ablaze.<\/p>\n
The FBI later said he was motivated by “anti-religious beliefs” against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n
Oakland County is Michigan’s second-largest county with roughly 1.3 million people. The majority of Detroit-area Jewish residents live there.<\/p>\n
Temple Israel has 12,000 members, according to its website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayman Mohamad Ghazali (41), a naturalised US citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,898,282],"class_list":["post-347536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}