The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday that the brother of the man who carried out a vehicle attack at a Jewish preschool in Michigan held a senior position in Hezbollah as a weapons commander.

Ayman Muhammad Ghazali, 41, was killed Thursday after ramming a vehicle into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan.

According to a statement released by the IDF on Sunday morning, Ghazali’s brother, Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, oversaw weapons operations within a specialized division of Hezbollah’s Badr Unit.

The Israeli military said this branch of the Lebanese terror organization was responsible for firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilians during the recent conflict with Iran.

Just days before the Michigan attack, several members of Ghazali’s family were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. A local official told the Associated Press on Friday that two of Ghazali’s brothers, along with a niece and a nephew, died in the March 5 strike in the town of Mashgharah.

The relatives were reportedly gathered for their evening meal marking the end of the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when the strike occurred.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Ghazali entered the United States in 2011 after marrying an American citizen and later obtained U.S. citizenship during President Obama’s administration in 2016.

On Thursday, Ghazali drove approximately 38 miles from his home in Dearborn Heights, a Detroit suburb with a large Muslim population, to Temple Israel — one of the largest Reform synagogues in the United States. The complex includes a synagogue building as well as a school and early childhood center.

After crashing his vehicle, which investigators said contained fireworks and containers of gasoline, Ghazali exchanged gunfire with an armed security guard. Authorities said he eventually died after fatally shooting himself when the burning vehicle trapped him inside.

All 140 children, teachers, and staff members inside the synagogue complex escaped unharmed, a result credited to the swift actions of the synagogue’s security personnel.

“If they had not all done their jobs almost perfectly, we would be talking about an immense tragedy here with children gone,” US Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Dem., M-17) told a news conference Friday.

In Dearborn Heights, a mosque hosted a memorial service last weekend for Ghazali’s relatives who were killed in Lebanon.

The mosque’s imam, Hassan Qazwini, said he had encountered Ghazali only once and condemned the attack on the synagogue.

“Islam forbids holding innocent people accountable for acts done by others,” Qazwini told AP.

“The unjustified Israeli attack on civilians in Iran and Lebanon gives no blank check to anyone attacking synagogues, civilians and peaceful communities,” he said.