British police said on Thursday that two people were killed and three injured in an attack outside a synagogue in the north of Manchester, England.
In a series of Posts on X, the Grand Manchester police said they had been called to the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Crumpsall shortly after 9:30 a.m. by a member of the public. The appellant said that he had witnessed a car led to public members and that a man had been stabbed.
Police said a few minutes later, shots were fired by police.
Grand Manchester police said they thought the suspect died, but this fact “cannot be confirmed currently due to security problems surrounding suspicious articles on his person.” The unit of elimination of the bombs of the force responded to the scene.
Police said the injured were in serious condition without developing. The faithful inside the synagogue were not among the injured.
“We are grateful to the public member whose rapid response to what they have seen made it possible to allow our rapid action and, therefore, the offender was prevented from entering the synagogue,” said a police spokesman in a social media position.
The British government is organizing an emergency meeting
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that additional police are deployed in synagogues across the United Kingdom
Starmer, in Copenhagen for a summit, in an article on social networks, thanked the first stakeholders and said that his thoughts were with the victims and their loved ones.
“I am dismayed by the attack during a synagogue in Crumpsall,” said Starmer. “The fact that this took place on Yom Kippour, the most holy day of the Jewish calendar, makes it even more horrible.”
Starmer returned from the summit to chair a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, Cobra.
Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust, a charitable organization that monitors anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom, said Yom Kippour is the most holy day of the Jewish year. “It’s a very solemn day and the synagogues across the country will be full throughout the day,” he said.
He said that there is “always an important security operation in place” between the police and confidence through the Jewish community on all the main Jewish festivals.
Manchester was the site of the deadliest attack in Great Britain in recent years, the 2017 suicide bombing during an Ariana Grande concert which killed 22 people.
