Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British man of Syrian descent, drove a car at people outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue before attacking people with a knife. He was shot dead by police at the scene.
The man who carried out an attack at a synagogue in Manchester on Thursday which left two Jewish people dead and three others injured has been named by police as Jihad Al-Shamie.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said three further people had been arrested as part of the investigation into the “terrorist incident”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned the “terrorist attack”, which took place on Yom Kippur – the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.Sir Keir said that “additional police assets” would be deployed at synagogues across the country, while London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said that “high visibility” policing in and around synagogues in the capital would also be “stepped up”.
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the attack in Crumpsall, north Manchester, was the “tragic result” of an “unrelenting wave of Jew hatred on our streets, campuses, on social media and elsewhere”.
“This is the day we hoped we would never see, but which deep down, we knew would come,” he added.
The three injured men include one who was stabbed, a second who was struck by the vehicle and a third who later went to hospital with an injury “that may have been sustained as officers stopped the attacker”, GMP says.
GMP said that two men in their 30s and a woman in her 60s had been arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.
A spokesman for the force added that a suspicious device worn by the attacker during the incident had been assessed and found not to be a viable explosive.
He added that no referrals related to Al-Shamie had been made to Prevent – the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme.
It is understood that Al-Shamie entered the UK as a young child, and was granted British citizenship in 2006 as a minor