Man who attacked Michigan synagogue lost relatives in Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, official says

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A man with a rifle who crashed into a large Michigan synagogue in what federal officials say was an attack had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an official said Friday.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit and driving down a hallway in a vehicle that then caught fire, according to authorities.

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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin during a news conference Friday praised Temple Israel's private security for swiftly stopping the attack.

“If they had not all done their jobs almost perfectly, we would be talking about an immense tragedy here with children gone,” Slotkin said.

Whitmer urged Americans to “lower the rhetoric” amid what she called a rising wave of antisemitism. She said the children attending school at the synagogue were 5 and younger.

“This is targeting babies who are Jewish," Whitmer said. "That is antisemitism at its absolute worst.”

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.

An Israeli airstrike killed four people in the eastern Lebanon town of Mashgharah on March 5, Lebanon's state agency and the Lebanese Health Ministry reported. A woman was also wounded.

The ripple effects of the Iran war have spread across the Middle East.