The Israeli military revealed on Sunday that Ibrahim Ghazali, the brother of the man behind the recent Michigan synagogue attack, was identified as a Hezbollah commander and was killed in a Lebanese airstrike a week before the synagogue incident. The airstrike, which occurred on March 5, also claimed the lives of three other relatives of Ghazali. The FBI’s Detroit office, currently investigating the synagogue attack, refrained from commenting on Israel’s military claims regarding Ibrahim Ghazali, citing the ongoing investigation.
According to Israeli military sources, Ibrahim Ghazali was allegedly responsible for managing weapons for a unit that launched rockets at Israel. Confirming Ghazali’s death, a Lebanese official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, disclosed that the airstrike also resulted in the deaths of Ghazali’s children, Ali and Fatima, as well as his brother, Kassim. Hezbollah, in a statement to The Associated Press, acknowledged that Ibrahim and Kassim Ghazali were involved in a local soccer league and were targeted at their home alongside their children.
Ayman Ghazali, the individual who carried out the synagogue attack in Michigan, reportedly did so after learning about the deaths of his family members in the Israeli airstrike. The escalation of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon has been noted amid the broader conflict with Iran in the Middle East. In the synagogue attack, Ayman Ghazali waited outside Temple Israel near Detroit armed with a rifle, fireworks, and flammable liquid before crashing into the building and engaging in a gunfight with security personnel. The FBI described the incident as an act of violence against the Jewish community but refrained from classifying it as terrorism pending further investigation. Ghazali, who obtained U.S. citizenship in 2016, resided in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, not far from the synagogue. The attack occurred on the same day that a former Army National Guard member, previously imprisoned for aiding the Islamic State, opened fire at Old Dominion University in Virginia, resulting in casualties.
