UK police ‘may’ have shot synagogue attack victims

AFP | London

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UK police said yesterday they may have shot two victims, including one who died, as officers responded to an attack on worshippers at a Manchester synagogue marking a Jewish holiday.

The admission came as Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the scene of Thursday’s car ramming and stabbings. Two men were killed and three people were seriously wounded, heightening fears for Jewish communities across Britain.

“This was a dreadful attack, a terrorist attack to inflict fear, attacking Jews because they are Jews,” the UK leader told a group of emergency responders in the northwest English city.

Security has been boosted at synagogues nationwide following the events at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest holiday of the Jewish calendar. Police shot dead the attacker, named as Jihad al-Shamie, a UK citizen of Syrian descent, within minutes of responding to calls that a car had ploughed into people and a security guard had been stabbed.

Greater Manchester Police named the two men killed as locals Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66.

Yesterday, Chief Constable Stephen Watson said an interior ministry pathologist had “provisionally determined that one of the deceased victims would appear to have suffered a wound consistent with a gunshot injury”.

Noting the attacker was not believed to have had a gun, and that “the only shots fired were from ... authorised firearms officers”, Watson said the injury “may sadly have been sustained as a tragic and unforeseen consequence” of officers responding to the attack.

He added that the condition of the victim who was wounded by gunshot was not life threatening.