Two people have been killed in a knife and car attack at a synagogue in Manchester that took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, in what Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer denounced as a terrorist incident.
The assailant in Thursday morning’s attack drove a car into members of the public outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue and then stabbed people with a knife.
Greater Manchester Police said its officers fatally shot the attacker at 9.38am, seven minutes after being called to the synagogue, as worshippers barricaded themselves inside.
The police on Thursday evening said that, although formal identification was yet to take place, they believed the person responsible for the attack to be Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, a British citizen of Syrian descent.
The attacker reportedly wore a vest that had the appearance of an explosive device, but the police said it was later deemed “not to be viable”.
The police also said their records showed no previous referrals of Al-Shamie to Prevent, the government’s anti-radicalisation programme.
They added that three people had been arrested “on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism”. They are two men in their thirties and a woman in her sixties.
In a televised address to the nation, Starmer described the attacker as a “vile individual who committed a terror attack, who attacked Jews because they are Jews, and attacked Britain because of our values”.
In comments aimed at the Jewish community, he added: “I promise you I will do everything in my power to guarantee you the security you deserve, starting with a more visible police presence protecting your community.”
Starmer visited a synagogue in London with his wife Victoria on Thursday evening.
The prime minister had returned to London early from a summit in Copenhagen to chair the UK government’s Cobra emergency response group.
The Manchester attack is the first fatal incident targeting Jewish people in the UK in at least 30 years, according to data from the Community Security Trust, a UK charity that tracks antisemitism.
However, it comes against the backdrop of a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in the country in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent Gaza war. The CST recorded 1,521 incidents in the first half of the year.
In a post on X, Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, said UK authorities had “failed to take the necessary action to curb this toxic wave of antisemitism and have effectively allowed it to persist”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said on X that Israel grieved with the Jewish community in the UK after the attack in Manchester.
“As I warned at the UN: weakness in the face of terrorism only brings more terrorism. Only strength and unity can defeat it,” he added, referring to his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York last week.
UK home secretary Shabana Mahmood, speaking at the scene of the Manchester attack, said the government had stepped up security at synagogues across the UK.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said the city region “will never let acts that are designed to cause hatred, division in our communities, violence — we will never let them succeed”.
Communities needed to redouble efforts to stand united and work together in the aftermath of the atrocity, he added.
In addition to the two men killed by the assailant, the police said three other men remained in hospital with “serious injuries”. One sustained a stab wound and another was struck by the car involved in the attack.
Witnesses told police that one of the people attacked was a security guard at the synagogue.
Footage of the scene shared on social media showed the attacker writhing on the ground within the gates of the synagogue when police shot him. An officer shouted to a nearby crowd: “He has a bomb,” and “Move back.”
Shortly after the attack, specialist counter-terrorism police, officers armed with machine guns, and members of the army were seen at the site, as well as a damaged black Kia car that had been driven off the road near the gates to the synagogue.
On Thursday afternoon, a large police cordon was in place in Crumpsall, the Manchester suburb where the attack occurred, which is multicultural with a large Jewish community.
A helicopter flew overhead and members of the public had gathered.
A Jewish woman who lives nearby told the Financial Times that all the nearby synagogues were on “lockdown”, adding the situation was “very worrying”.