WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) — Investigators worked Friday to determine the exact reason a man with a rifle crashed into a large Michigan synagogue in what federal officials are saying was an attack carried out by a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit, Michigan, and driving down a hallway in a vehicle that then caught fire, according to authorities.

The FBI, which is leading the investigation, described the attack on one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.

The synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at its early childhood center were not injured, according to Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.

Ghazali came to the U.S. in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and was granted U.S. citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

In the minutes after the attack, smoke billowed from the synagogue. One security officer was hit by the vehicle and knocked unconscious but did not suffer life-threatening injuries, Bouchard said. And 30 law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.

Cassi Cohen, director of strategic development at Temple Israel, was in the hallway where the crash happened. She described hearing a loud bang and said she grabbed a few staff members, ran into her office and locked the door.

“When I heard the crash, I knew it was bad,” Cohen said.

She said the crash happened near a classroom and, in addition to the children, there were also more than 30 staff members in the synagogue.

Rabbi Arianna Gordon, from Temple Israel, thanked the security team, law enforcement and early childhood teachers for getting the children out safely and reunited with their parents.

About a dozen parents sprinted to get their children soon after authorities cleared the building. Other families were reunited at a nearby Jewish Community Center.

Allison Jacobs, whose 18-month-old daughter is enrolled in Temple Israel’s day care, said she got a message from a teacher saying the children were OK even before she knew what happened.

“There are no words. I was in complete and utter shock,” she said.

Synagogues around the world have been on edge and ramping up security since the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran with missile strikes on Feb. 28.

The FBI has warned that Iranian operatives may be planning drone attacks on targets in California. Two men brought explosives to a far-right protest outside the New York mayoral mansion on Saturday. Investigators allege they were inspired by the Islamic State extremist group.

And an assailant drove a car into people outside an Orthodox synagogue in Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. He stabbed two people to death before officers shot and killed him.

President Donald Trump said he had been fully briefed on the attack, calling it a “terrible thing.”

Steven Ingber, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Detroit, said Thursday: “I’d love to say that I’m shocked, that I’m surprised, but I’m not.”

The attack was the second at a house of worship in Michigan within the past year. Last September, a former Marine fatally shot four people at a church north of Detroit and set it ablaze. The FBI later said he was motivated by “anti-religious beliefs” against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Oakland County is Michigan’s second-largest county with roughly 1.3 million people. The majority of Detroit-area Jewish residents live there. Temple Israel has 12,000 members, according to its website.

PARIS (AP) — Gasoline prices are rising largely because of the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. The waterway off Iran’s coast, now effectively closed, is so vital for the global economy that governments are working on blueprints to speedily reopen it to shipping when the shooting stops.

In Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron is leading an international effort to unblock the energy choke point, so that oil, gas and goods could flow freely again “when circumstances permit.” He envisions countries using warships to escort tankers and container vessels through the strait when fighting is less intense, whenever that may be.

Former naval officers who have served in the Hormuz passage say vessels would be sitting ducks, with little room for maneuver in the strait’s narrow shipping lanes, if foreign naval forces attempted to reopen the waterway before a cessation of hostilities.

“In today’s context, sending warships or civilian vessels into the Strait of Hormuz would be suicidal,” French navy retired Vice Adm. Pascal Ausseur said in an interview with The Associated Press.

A ceasefire agreement with Iran “would make the situation shift from suicidal to dangerous. At that point, military ships could be deployed. And then escort operations could begin,” he said.

Here’s a look at how Hormuz might be made navigable again:

Battle-hardened in the Red Sea

French, American, British and other naval crews already have valuable experience of fighting off missiles and drones in the region. They have escorted and defended cargo vessels through attacks in the Red Sea carried out by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

French frigates used machine guns, cannons and sophisticated air-defense missiles to fend off Houthi strikes. French frigate Alsace downed three ballistic missiles in the Red Sea in 2024 as it was escorting a container ship. The ship’s commander at the time, Capt. Jérôme Henry, told the AP that being on the receiving end of the potentially deadly strikes was unnerving and exhausting. The sea battles also took a toll on U.S. Navy ships and personnel.

“There were repeated attacks, either by drones or missiles,” Henry said in an interview. “The crew didn’t get much sleep.”

French retired Vice Adm. Michel Olhagaray, a former head of France’s center for higher military studies, says that “all navies learned a great deal” about working together and escorting ships from their Red Sea missions and have also drawn on Ukraine’s experiences against Russian barrages of missiles and drones during Moscow’s war.

“It would allow us to deploy to that region with fairly refined know-how and a high level of cooperation — and that is extremely important,” said Olhagaray, who commanded a French frigate that patrolled the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Higher risks

Iran is militarily far better equipped than its Houthi proxies in Yemen, which caused considerable damage and disruption in the Red Sea between November 2023 and January 2025. Armed by Iran, the rebels targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two and killing four sailors, and greatly reduced trade flows.

Iran can reach all of the Strait of Hormuz and its approaches with anti-ship cruise missiles that it developed off Chinese-made weapons, according to mapping by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. It can also target vessels with longer-range missiles, drones, fast attack craft and naval mines, which it used during the Iran-Iraq war. U.S. strikes on mine-laying Iranian vessels in this latest conflict underscore the gravity of that danger.

With war raging, the Hormuz passage is “very, very dangerous” and the risks for shipping are “much greater” than in the Red Sea against the Houthis, Olhagaray said.

“The means to counter this threat must be far more substantial and far more effective,” he said. “Before the heat can decrease … most of the offensive installations on land in Iran would have to be eliminated. There would need to be constant monitoring, patrols, extremely close surveillance, and a very high level of intelligence to be able to say that it would be possible to allow tankers to transit, even with military escorts.”

“That will not happen at all — not at all — in the near future.”

Reassuring insurers

Experts say another challenge will be reassuring shipping insurers and companies that navigating in Hormuz waters is feasible again. Insurance premiums for shipping in the strait have soared to levels that France’s transport minister described as “insane,” causing “a big problem” for shippers.

“Maritime traffic is a business. That business has to make money. If insurance costs are so high that you can’t make a profit by sailing through a given area, then you don’t sail through that area,” said Ausseur, now a director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies, a think tank.

Insurance rates for oil tankers that want to transit through Hormuz are many times higher than they were before the war and are approaching levels that have been charged for ships carrying grain from Ukraine during the ongoing war with Russia, said Marcus Baker, global head of marine, cargo and logistics for insurance broker and risk adviser Marsh Risk.

Potential naval escorts for commercial ships “would be helpful,” Baker said.

“That’s been done before in conflicts past, so that’s not something unusual and that will obviously give a degree of confidence to the insurers that the vessels are going to have a greater degree of safety,” he said.