Synagogue attacker lost family members in Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, official says

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Dearborn Heights, Michigan, crashed a vehicle into Temple Israel, one of the nation's largest Reform synagogues, in West Bloomfield Township. Federal officials are calling the incident an act of violence targeting the Jewish community. Ghazali, who came to the U.S. in 2011 and became a citizen in 2016, had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon just a week prior to the attack. According to a local Lebanese official, Ghazali's two brothers Kassim and Ibrahim, as well as Ibrahim's children Ali and Fatima, were killed in the airstrike as they were having their fast-breaking meal during Ramadan. The synagogue's staff, teachers, and 140 children at its early childhood center were not injured in the attack, though one security officer was briefly knocked unconscious. Thirty law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation. The FBI is leading the investigation into the incident, which they have described as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.