{"id":18639,"date":"2026-03-14T02:29:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T02:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/18639\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T02:29:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T02:29:18","slug":"suspect-in-michigan-synagogue-attack-idd-as-lebanese-immigrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/18639\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspect in Michigan synagogue attack ID’d as Lebanese immigrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

(JTA<\/a>) \u2014 The Department of Homeland Security has identified the man killed while attacking a suburban Detroit synagogue as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a U.S. citizen who immigrated from Lebanon 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

Ghazali, 41, was a resident of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, according to its mayor, Mo Baydoun. Baydoun said in a statement<\/a> that members of Ghazali\u2019s family, including his niece and nephew, had recently been killed \u201cin an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghazali was shot by security after driving an explosives-laden truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, a heavily Jewish suburb about 20 miles north of his home.<\/p>\n

DHS said Ghazali had entered the United States in 2011 on a visa meant for the foreign-born spouses of American citizens. He became a U.S. citizen in 2016 after applying for naturalization in 2015.<\/p>\n

Ghazali worked at a popular restaurant in Dearborn Heights, Hamido, but had been absent in recent weeks, fellow employees told The New York Times<\/a>. Coworkers and a neighbor praised him to the Detroit Free Press<\/a>, with the neighbor saying she had planned to bring him flowers because his brother had died.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officials in Michigan said they were still investigating Ghazali\u2019s motive. But reports on social media tied him to four people with\u00a0the last name Ghazali, including a young boy and girl, who a Lebanese news outlet reported<\/a> were killed on March 5 in Mashghara, Lebanon. Al Jazeera reported<\/a> at the time that the family was killed in an \u201cIsraeli army raid on a house.\u201d The raid took place three days after the Israeli army urged<\/a> residents of Mashghara, a Hezbollah stronghold, to evacuate buildings used by Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

Israel has long battled Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in Lebanon, in a conflict that has escalated this month after Hezbollah resumed firing on Israel<\/a> after Israel and the United States attacked Iran. The Lebanese government said on Thursday that 98 children were among the nearly 700 people killed since March 2. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah strongholds, including in densely packed Beirut.<\/p>\n

A recent poll of \u201cconnected\u201d American Jews<\/a> \u2014 those affiliated with synagogues and Jewish organizations \u2014 found that while the majority supported the war, most also believed it would increase antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the United States.<\/p>\n

Officials identified the perpetrator of a second incident on Thursday, a shooting at Old Dominion University in Virginia that killed a member of the ROTC army corps, as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized citizen who previously spent more than seven years in prison after being convicted of attempting to provide aid to the Islamic State terrorist group.<\/p>\n

Authorities in Norway, meanwhile, said they had determined that two men whose behavior had ignited a major police response outside a Trondheim synagogue on Thursday posed no threat.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

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