How the deadly synagogue attack in Manchester unfolded on Yom Kippur

Morning prayers on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, were already underway at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester on Thursday, when police got a report of a car seen driving toward people and that a security guard had been stabbed.

In a harrowing attack, which authorities said they were treating as a “terrorist incident,” two people were killed and four others seriously wounded at the synagogue in the north of England.

As of Thursday evening, three men remained in the hospital with serious injuries.

The police fatally shot the suspect and, in an evening update, named him as 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie, a British citizen of Syrian descent.

They did not indicate a possible motive other than to note that the bloodshed occurred on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

“An attack on our Jewish community today on Yom Kippur is devastating,” counter terrorism policing assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor said at a briefing Thursday afternoon.

How the terror unfolded

The violence started at around 9.30am, about a half-hour after services started. A man who apparently rammed some victims with a car and stabbed others with a knife did not enter the synagogue but was killed by police on the street.

Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Stephen Watson praised the “bravery” of the security staff and worshippers inside, who he said had helped to prevent the assailant from entering the synagogue.

The attacker was found with “suspicious items on his person,” police said. A bomb disposal unit responded to the scene. Video footage broadcast on the BBC showed a police officer shouting at bystanders: “Get back … he has a bomb, go away.”

Officers intercepted the attacker and shot him “within seven minutes of the initial call,” Const. Watson said, adding that the man was wearing a body vest that “had an appearance of an explosive device.” The police later said that the device was not viable.

Three suspects were arrested on “suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism,” the police said. Two are men in their 30s; one is a woman in her 60s.

On Thursday evening, the police presence around the synagogue remained heavy, with a helicopter patrolling overhead.

Community reeling

Russell Bernstein, a Manchester city councillor from the neighbourhood, said he was braced for the news to spread throughout the Jewish community once people emerged from nearly 24 hours of fasting and being cloistered in prayer with phones and televisions off since Wednesday evening.

“This is a very close-knit community, but many of them will not have any idea that this has happened,” Mr Bernstein said.

Still, they will have no doubt about the attacker’s intent, he said. “Against the rise in antisemitic attacks recently, we all understand his motives very clearly,” Mr Bernstein said.

“The morning of Yom Kippur, many people would be at the synagogue. The services were just starting. This was a very deliberate and targeted attack.”

A man walking with his son, both wearing Jewish prayer shawls, said he had only heard of the attacks since leaving his home Thursday evening for the first time since the holiday began.

He looked up at the hovering helicopter and the police guarding the entrance to the Manchester Kollel and said he felt a mix of fear and anger.

“They want to kill us,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for his family’s safety. “They come into our shul to kill us, they come into our homes. We are not safe anywhere.”

Starmer condemns the ‘horrific’ attack

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by the assault, calling its timing on Yom Kippur “all the more horrific.”

Sir Keir cut short a trip to Denmark to return to London, where he was set to chair a meeting of the Government’s COBRA emergency committee.

The attack - condemned by Israel’s embassy in London as “abhorrent and deeply distressing” - sent ripples of fear through Britain’s Jewish community, which was already on edge amid rising antisemitic incidents in recent years.

Photographs showed worshippers, some in prayer shawls, on the street outside the synagogue, interspersed with armed emergency responders in helmets and flak jackets.

Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation is in the Crumpsall area of Manchester, about three miles north of the city centre.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, told the BBC that a “serious incident” had taken place and that a car had been driven at members of the public.

Mr Burnham said that “lots of people were attending a service,” and that the situation was “probably linked to the fact that it’s Yom Kippur.”

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