The Israeli military said today, March 15, that the brother of the man who drove an explosives-laden vehicle into a synagogue in Michigan on Thursday, March 12, was a Hezbollah commander who was killed in an airstrike last week.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the attacker’s brother, Ibrahim Mohamed Ghazali, was responsible for overseeing weapons operations in Hezbollah’s “Badr” unit, which Israel describes as an Iranian proxy force.

An IDF spokesperson said Ibrahim Ghazali was killed on March 5 in an Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah military building that was allegedly being used to store weapons.

On Thursday, 41-year-old Ayman Ghazali drove a vehicle packed with explosives into the Temple Israel synagogue, where it burst into flames. The FBI described the incident as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”

Police said Ghazali was shot and killed by synagogue security officers, who neutralized the threat.

One security officer was injured, and at least 30 officers were treated for smoke inhalation. Authorities also said that more than 100 children who were inside the building were unharmed.

Suspected links to Hezbollah

Ayman Ghazali, originally from Lebanon, entered the United States in 2011 on a visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen. He became a U.S. citizen in 2016. He worked at a Middle Eastern restaurant, and his wife filed for divorce in 2024, with the divorce expected to be finalized in March 2025.

In 2019, he traveled abroad, and the trip came under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security because he had been flagged as a person of interest due to previous contacts with Hezbollah suspects.

When he returned to the United States through Atlanta, authorities searched his phone and found contacts with individuals known or suspected to be linked to Hezbollah.

According to U.S. law enforcement officials, he was listed in government databases because of connections to known or suspected terrorists associated with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

However, despite those links, he was not officially listed in government databases as a member of Hezbollah.

A week before the attack, two of Ghazali’s brothers and two of their children were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. The mayor of the village of Masgara, where they lived, confirmed the deaths and said the strikes had also targeted financial institutions linked to Hezbollah.

The IDF made no mention of Ayman Ghazali’s other brother, Qassim, who was also killed in the strike.