The perpetrator has been identified as a 41-year-old Lebanese man who lost family members in an Israeli attack in Lebanon earlier this month.

The man who died attacking a synagogue in a Detroit suburb of Michigan on Thursday shot himself in the head, FBI agent Jennifer Runyan said at a press conference Friday.

While the perpetrator has been identified as a 41-year-old Lebanese man who lost family members in an Israeli attack in Lebanon earlier this month, "it would be irresponsible of me to speculate on his motive" for attacking this Jewish place of worship, the U.S. federal police officer added.

She also indicated that the FBI was not linking this attack to the one that occurred the same day at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, in the eastern United States.

The attacker was born in Lebanon and arrived in Detroit in 2011

The attacker at the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield has been identified as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, born in Lebanon, who arrived in Detroit in 2011 on a visa granted to spouses of American citizens and became an American citizen himself in 2016.

Security guards shot him after he drove a pickup truck into the doors of the synagogue—which bills itself as the largest Reform Jewish synagogue in the United States—and opened fire through the bumper of his vehicle. Ghazali then became trapped inside his burning pickup and shot himself in the head “at some point during the shooting,” Runyan said.

In his vehicle were found "large quantities of fireworks" as well as "several cans of flammable liquid", probably gasoline, partly consumed by the fire.

"Act of terrorism"

Of the approximately 600 law enforcement officers involved in the subsequent operation, which included assisting about 100 children inside the synagogue, 63 were hospitalized after inhaling smoke, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Friday. A security guard, struck by the suspect, was also taken to the hospital.