One of two victims in Manchester synagogue attack may have been killed by bullet fired by police
One of the two men killed in a car and knife attack on a synagogue in the city of Manchester appears to have been killed by a bullet fired by a police officer as worshippers tried to stop the attacker getting into the building, law enforcement authorities said Friday.
Police said local residents Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, died in the attack on the Heaton Park Congregation Synagogue in the Manchester suburb of Crumpsall on Thursday. Three other people are hospitalised in serious condition.
Police shot and killed a suspect seven minutes after he rammed a car into pedestrians outside the synagogue and then attacked them with a knife. He wore what appeared to be an explosives belt, which was found to be fake.
Greater Manchester Police chief Stephen Watson said a forensic examination has provisionally determined that one of those killed had a gunshot wound. He said the attacker did not have a gun, and “this injury may sadly have been sustained as a tragic and unforeseen consequence” of police He said one of the hospitalised victims also appears to have been shot.
“It is believed that both victims were close together behind the synagogue door, as worshippers acted bravely to prevent the attacker from gaining entry,” Watson said.
The assault took place as people gathered at the Orthodox synagogue on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar.Police identified the attacker as Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent who entered the United Kingdom as a young child and became a citizen in 2006. Al-Shamie translates into English as “the Syrian,” and authorities are unsure whether that is his birth name.
Police said the crime is being investigated as a terrorist attack. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the attacker was not previously known to police or to Prevent, a national counterterror program that tries to identify people at risk of radicalisation.Neighbours of the attacker in the Manchester suburb of Prestwich, a couple of miles (about 3 kilometres) from the synagogue, said Al-Shamie’s family had lived in the house for years. Several described seeing Al-Shamie lifting weights and working out in the backyard.
Geoff Halliwell, who lives nearby, said he appeared to be “a straightforward, ordinary lad.”Hatred and racism of any kind cannot be allowed to tear us apart,” she said
Police said extra officers would be on the streets of Manchester on Friday and through the weekend.
Recorded antisemitic incidents in the U.K. have risen sharply since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza, according to Community Security Trust, an advocacy group for British Jews. More than 1,500 incidents were reported in the first half of the year, the second-highest six-month total reported since the record set over the same period a year earlier.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the head of Orthodox Judaism in Britain, said the attack was the result of “an unrelenting wave of Jew hatred” on the streets and online.