Updated October 02, 2025 at 20:01 PM ET
LONDON — At least two people were killed and several injured in a car-ramming and stabbing outside a synagogue in northern England on a major Jewish holiday Thursday, an attack police called a “terrorist incident.”
The attack occurred as Jewish community members were gathering at Manchester’s Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue for Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day.
Greater Manchester Police officers shot and killed a suspected attacker and arrested three suspects in connection with the incident.
Later Thursday, the police identified the man they believed was responsible for the attack: Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent. The police said there was no record of the man in a U.K. counterterrorism program that works to prevent people from being drawn into extremist crime.
“We are working to understand the motivation behind the attack as the investigation continues,” a police statement said.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack “appalling” and “all the more horrific” for taking place on a Jewish holiday.
Yom Kippur, known as the Day of Atonement, is a holiday when Jews engage in fasting, prayer and reflection, beginning at sundown Wednesday.
It was around the time of the holiday’s Thursday morning service when an attacker drove his car into people outside the synagogue in Crumpsall, a largely residential area about 3 miles from Manchester’s city center.
“The driver of the car was seen then to attack people with a knife,” Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Stephen Watson said in a statement. “Following a rapid response, armed officers from Greater Manchester Police intercepted the offender and he was fatally shot by officers within 7 minutes of the original call.”
Passersby recorded videos of officers yelling at people outside the temple to “move back!”
The police initially said the suspect wore “a vest that had the appearance of an explosive device,” but they later determined the supposed device was not “viable.”
The attack came less than a week before the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza that followed. There’s been an increase since then of Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents.
“This was a vile terrorist attack that attacked Jews, because they are Jews,” Starmer later said in an address. He said antisemitism is a “hatred that is rising, once again. And Britain must defeat it, once again.”
After London, Manchester is home to the United Kingdom’s second-biggest Jewish community.
It is also the city where a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert killed 22 people in 2017.
After Thursday’s attack, King Charles III said in an online statement that he and Queen Camilla were “deeply saddened and shocked to learn of the horrific attack in Manchester, especially on such a significant day for the Jewish community.”
British Christian and Muslim community leaders also offered messages of support and prayers to the country’s Jewish people.
Police have fanned out to guard synagogues across the country.
Raphi Bloom was on his way to the Heaton Park synagogue for the morning service when he received a call from a friend telling him not to go, there had been an attack there.
“I never thought it would happen in my synagogue, in my city, but it’s something we all expected,” he told the BBC.
Fatima Al-Kassab contributed reporting in London.
Copyright 2025 NPR
