October 1, 2026
JERUSALEM (AP) — The man who attacked a Michigan synagogue was the brother of a Hezbollah commander killed earlier this month in an Israeli airstrike, Israel’s military said Sunday.
Ibrahim Ghazali was killed in the March 5 strike in Lebanon along with three other relatives of the attacker in Michigan — a week before Ayman Mohamad Ghazali drove his car into a major synagogue outside Detroit and killed himself after security fired at him.
The FBI's Detroit office, which is investigating the synagogue attack, declined to comment on the Israeli military statement about Ibrahim Ghazali.
“Out of respect for the ongoing investigation, we will continue to refrain from commenting on its substance,” FBI spokesman Jordan Hall said in an email Sunday.
The Israeli military said 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. The official told The Associated Press that Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, and brother, Kassim, were also killed in the strike that struck 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 terrorist 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.
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.
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 40 miles south of the synagogue.
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