A man who crashed his pickup truck into a Detroit-area synagogue earlier in March was carrying out an attack inspired by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, the FBI said Monday.
Ayman Ghazali made a video before the attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, saying he wanted to ‘kill as many of them as I possibly can,’ said Jennifer Runyan, head of the FBI in Detroit.
A week before the attack, Ghazali learned that four of his family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike in his native country of Lebanon, according to an official there. Ghazali was a US citizen.
Israel’s military said a brother, Ibrahim Ghazali, who was killed in the airstrike, was a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon.
US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate committee that Ayman Ghazali had family ties ‘to a Hezbollah leader.’