Israel says brother of Michigan synagogue assailant was Hezbollah commander killed in strike

By Tal Shalev, Oren Liebermann, CNN

(CNN) — The Israeli military said the brother of the man who drove a vehicle laden with explosives into a Michigan synagogue Thursday was a Hezbollah commander killed in a strike last week.

In a statement Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said the assailant’s brother, Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, was in charge of managing weapons operations in the Iranian proxy group’s Badr unit.

IDF Arabic language spokesman Avichay Adraee said Ibrahim Ghazali was killed March 5 when the IDF struck a Hezbollah military building used to store weapons.

The Department of Homeland Security said Ayman Ghazali, 41, drove a vehicle into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit before exchanging fire with security officers and dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attack on the synagogue was one of several recent incidents that authorities are investigating as acts of terrorism, as the US continues into its third week of war with Iran.

A security guard was injured and dozens of first responders were treated for smoke inhalation, while the more than 100 children in the building were uninjured, authorities said. The FBI called the attack a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”

Ayman Ghazali, a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon, had previously been flagged in US government databases for connections to suspected Hezbollah members, though he was not believed to be a member himself, law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told CNN.

The mayor of the Lebanese town of Mashghara previously told CNN that Ayman Ghazali’s brothers, including Ibrahim, were killed in an airstrike March 5. Ibrahim Ghazali’s children were also killed in the strike, the mayor said.

The IDF made no mention of Ayman Ghazali’s other brother, Kassim, who was also killed in the strike.

Last weekend, two suspects were accused of tossing makeshift bombs at a protest outside the New York City mayor’s home in what authorities described as an ISIS-inspired attack.

Two weeks earlier in Austin, Texas, a shooter killed three people and injured more than a dozen others in the city’s bustling entertainment district. Underneath a hoodie, the shooter was wearing a T-shirt featuring an Iranian flag design, an official said. Though the motive has not been determined, authorities are investigating whether the shooter was inspired in part by US and Israeli strikes on Iran that weekend, law enforcement officials briefed on the case said.

Also on Thursday, one person was killed and two others were injured in a shooting at Old Dominion University in Virginia carried out by Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 36, a former member of the Virginia National Guard who previously served prison time for attempting to aid ISIS, according to authorities.

Several national and state leaders, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, have ramped up security efforts amid what they’ve described as a heightened threat environment tied to the conflict overseas.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

CNN’s John Miller contributed to this report.

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