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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military announced on Sunday that the brother of a man who recently targeted a synagogue in Michigan, and was killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier this month, had ties to Hezbollah as a commander.
The individual, Ibrahim Ghazali, died in Lebanon on March 5, along with three other relatives of the alleged attacker, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali. This incident occurred a week before Ayman reportedly drove into a synagogue near Detroit and subsequently died after an exchange of gunfire with security personnel.
The FBI’s Detroit division, currently investigating the synagogue attack, chose not to respond to Israel’s claims regarding Ibrahim Ghazali’s connection to Hezbollah.
“We will continue to withhold comments on the details of the investigation out of respect for its ongoing nature,” FBI spokesperson Jordan Hall stated in an email on Sunday.
The Associated Press has not yet been able to independently confirm the assertion that Ibrahim Ghazali was involved in militant activities.
The Israeli military alleges Ibrahim Ghazali was a Hezbollah commander who managed weapons for a unit that fired rockets at Israel.
A Lebanese official, who requested anonymity because he could not publicly discuss details of the airstrike, has confirmed Ibrahim Ghazali’s death, telling the AP that Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, and brother, Kassim, were also killed in the strike that hit their home just after sunset.
Authorities have said that Ayman Ghazali, 41, carried out the synagogue attack after learning that four of his family members were killed in the Israeli strike.
Israel has stepped up attacks on the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as the war with Iran has spread violence across the Middle East.
On Thursday, Ayman Ghazali waited in his car outside Temple Israel, near Detroit, for about two hours with a rifle, commercial grade fireworks and jugs of liquid believed to be gasoline, before crashing into the building full of dozens of children, according to authorities.
He started firing his gun through the windshield, exchanging fire with an armed security guard. Ghazali fatally shot himself after he got stuck in his vehicle and the engine caught fire, said Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office. No staffers or children inside the synagogue were hurt, likely due to beefed up security in recent months.
The FBI, which is leading the investigation, described the attack on one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community, but said that they didn’t have enough evidence yet to call it an act of terror.
Ghazali came to the U.S. in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and was granted U.S. citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
He lived in a single-story brick home in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights about 38 miles (61 kilometers) south of the synagogue.
The attack on the Michigan synagogue took place on the same day as a former Army National Guard member who served years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State opened fire on a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia, killing one person and wounding two others.
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Mroue reported from Beirut.