Per week earlier than Thursday’s assault on a Michigan synagogue, the suspect’s two brothers and two of their kids have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, the mayor of the Lebanese village the place they lived informed NCS.
The Department of Homeland Security mentioned that Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, drove a automobile laden with explosives into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township close to Detroit. It then caught hearth, in what the FBI known as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.” The FBI mentioned the company is constant to research the assault.
Ghazali was killed after safety officers for the synagogue engaged him and “neutralized the threat,” West Bloomfield Police Chief Dale Young mentioned Thursday. One safety officer was damage in the assault, and not less than 30 regulation enforcement officers have been handled for smoke inhalation, authorities mentioned.
Iskandar Barakeh, the mayor of Mashghara, Lebanon, mentioned in a cellphone interview that Ghazali’s brothers, Kassim and Ibrahim, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike there on March 5, together with Ibrahim’s kids, Ali and Fatima. The two males’s wives and Ghazali’s dad and mom additionally sustained accidents, Barakeh mentioned.
Three Israeli airstrikes have not too long ago hit the village, which is about 30 miles southeast of Beirut, together with an assault on a monetary establishment related to the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah that broken a close-by college, in keeping with Barakeh. While some residents initially left the village, many have begun returning not too long ago, he mentioned.
Mo Baydoun, the mayor of Dearborn Heights, the Detroit suburb the place Ghazali lived, additionally mentioned in a statement that Ghazali had misplaced relations in Lebanon in an Israeli assault. “Everyone deserves to worship in peace, and we must unequivocally condemn any attack on a house of worship or the people within it,” Baydoun mentioned.
Ghazali, who was born in Lebanon, got here to the US in 2011 after receiving a visa because the partner of a US citizen, the DHS mentioned in an announcement. He grew to become a naturalized US citizen in 2016.
He labored at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Dearborn Heights, an worker on the restaurant mentioned. A supervisor on the restaurant declined to remark additional.
Ghazali’s spouse filed for divorce in August 2024, and the divorce was finalized in March 2025, in keeping with Wayne County court docket information.
NCS’s Rob Kuznia and Blake Ellis contributed to this report.