Police officers preparing to enter the Temple Israel synagogue on March 14, 2026, after an attack the previous day, in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Photo JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP Oakland County Sheriff Deputies prepare to enter Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on March 13, 2026, after a person drove a vehicle into the synagogue a day earlier. Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, was killed by security guards on March 12, after he rammed his pickup truck into the Temple Israel synagogue on the outskirts of Detroit causing a blaze and triggering a huge police response. US media reported he had recently lost family members in an Israeli strike in Lebanon, as part of the ongoing Middle East war. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP)
The man who died Thursday while attacking a synagogue in the Detroit suburbs shot himself in the head, FBI agent Jennifer Runyan said during a news conference Friday.
The attacker was identified as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, born in Lebanon. He arrived in Detroit in 2011 on a visa granted to spouses of U.S. citizens and became a U.S. citizen in 2016.
Runyan said it would be “irresponsible to speculate” about his motive, although investigators have confirmed that Ghazali had lost family members in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley earlier this month.
She also said the FBI has no indication the attack was linked to a separate shooting the same day at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where a military instructor was killed and two people were wounded when a gunman opened fire in a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) classroom before being shot dead.
Authorities said Ghazali rammed a pickup truck through the doors of Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, which describes itself as the largest Reform synagogue in the United States, and opened fire from the vehicle.
Security officers shot at him after the crash. Ghazali then became trapped in his burning pickup truck and shot himself in the head “at some point during the exchange of gunfire,” Runyan said.
Investigators found large quantities of fireworks and several cans of flammable liquid, likely gasoline, inside the vehicle, some of which had been partly consumed by the fire.
About 600 law enforcement officers took part in the response, including efforts to evacuate roughly 100 children who were inside the synagogue at the time, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Friday.
A total of 63 officers were hospitalized after inhaling smoke, Bouchard said. A security officer who was knocked down by the attacker was also taken to the hospital.
Runyan described the incident Thursday as “a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”
The New York Times reported Friday that an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on March 5 killed Ghazali’s brother Ibrahim, Ibrahim’s two young children and another brother, Kassem.
Before the attack, Ghazali attended a funeral ceremony for his relatives near Dearborn, Michigan, with family members and others from the Lebanese village of Machghara, the newspaper reported.
Divorced and the father of two teenagers, Ghazali had recently worked as a waiter, according to the report.
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