Assailant dead after ramming vehicle into Michigan synagogue

Reuters: A 41-year-old man was killed on Thursday after ramming his pickup truck into a synagogue on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, causing a blaze and triggering a huge police response.

US media reported the assailant had recently lost family members in an Israeli strike in Lebanon, as part of the ongoing Middle East war.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security identified the assailant as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, who was born in Lebanon, came to Detroit in 2011 on a visa granted to spouses of US citizens, and became a US citizen himself in 2016.

Security guards opened fire on Ghazali after he smashed a truck through the doors of the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told reporters.

At a news conference on Thursday evening, Bouchard said no synagogue staff or children were hurt in the attack, but 30 law enforcement officers were “taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation” after the evacuation efforts. Earlier, he said one security guard was injured by the assailant’s truck.

The FBI will investigate the incident “as a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the federal agency’s Detroit field office, told reporters Thursday.

Law enforcement has not yet publicly detailed a motive.

US President Donald Trump called the attack “terrible”.

A neighbour told the Detroit Free Press newspaper Ghazali “recently lost family in an Israeli strike in Lebanon”.