Washington: A man ramming his truck into a synagogue in Michigan and a fatal university shooting in Virginia are being treated as acts of terrorism amid heightened fears and a string of attacks globally during the US and Israel’s war with Iran.
Children were at preschool inside the Temple Israel Synagogue in a Detroit suburb when the man crashed his vehicle through the doors and into the hallway. He was killed in a confrontation with security personnel.
One of the security agents was hit by the vehicle and taken to hospital. “That individual should be OK,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said. No others inside the synagogue were hurt.
The incident is the latest in a number of attacks on members of the Jewish community, amid a rising tide of antisemitism globally.
A woman called Lisa told local television network WDIV she knew people in the temple and was “scared to death” for her friends. “There’s a whole daycare program in there,” she said. “This is senseless. We have to be better than this. This is not OK.”
Rabbi Arianna Gordon, who was inside the temple at the time of the attack, told NBC News that all children at the synagogue daycare escaped safely and were with their parents. “It was definitely a scary afternoon,” she said.
US President Donald Trump said he had been briefed on the Detroit synagogue incident.
“It’s a terrible thing, but it goes on,” he said at a White House function. “We’re going to be [getting] right down to the bottom of it. It’s absolutely incredible that things like this happen.”
Meanwhile, a shooting at a university campus in Virginia is being treated as an act of terrorism, with the shooter identified by US media outlets as a former National Guard soldier who was previously convicted of providing support to the Islamic State.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was subdued by students and is now dead after he opened fire in a classroom at Old Dominion University on Thursday morning (US time), killing one person and injuring two others.
FBI director Kash Patel said his agency was investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism through its Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Jalloh, 36, pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in December 2004.
It was not immediately clear how the assailant was killed. Kash praised a “group of brave students who stepped in and subdued him – actions that undoubtedly saved lives”.
The terrorism declaration comes amid heightened fears of so-called “sleeper cells” or lone-wolf actors carrying out attacks in the US following the Trump administration’s combat operations in Iran.
Amid the heightened security fears, the White House also pushed back against reports that Iran was planning a number of drone attacks on the US West Coast, particularly California.
America’s ABC News reported on an FBI alert about the possible drone attacks, though the alert was based on “unverified information” and contained no specifics.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called for the story to be retracted, arguing it was an attempt to alarm the American people based on an unverified tip.
“TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did,” Leavitt wrote on X.
The National Terrorism Advisory System, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, is currently not being updated due to a partial government shutdown.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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