US authorities on Sunday named 44-year-old British citizen Malik Faisal Akram as the hostage-taker in Saturday's 11-hour standoff at a Texas synagogue.
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The Dallas field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the identification.
Four people at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville were taken hostage after a gunman entered the building during Shabbat morning services that were being live-streamed. The live stream appeared to capture some of the incident before it was removed.
One of the hostages was released in the evening, according to police. Later in the night an elite FBI hostage rescue team breached the building and rescued the remaining captives, including the rabbi, according to local and federal officials.
Authorities said that the lone suspect, Akram, died at the end of the incident.
President Joe Biden on Sunday called the attack an "act of terror," in an apparent confirmation that Akram had sought the release of convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke with Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Sunday and thanked him for the determined and professional action by the law enforcement authorities in his state, which brought the incident to a peaceful conclusion.
Bennett told Abbott that the Israeli public anxiously followed the unfolding events and was greatly relieved that the hostage crisis ended without injury, the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. "He further thanked the governor for his steadfast solidarity with the Jewish community in Colleyville in particular and in Texas as a whole, his support for Israel and his fight against antisemitism and the BDS movement."
Bennett invited Abbott to visit Israel and the two men agreed to be in contact as necessary.
A rabbi who was among four people held hostage at a Texas synagogue said Sunday that their armed captor grew "increasingly belligerent and threatening" toward the end of the 10-hour standoff, which ended with an FBI SWAT team rushing into the building and the captor's death.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker credited security training that his suburban Fort Worth congregation has received over the years for getting him and the other three hostages through the ordeal, which he described as traumatic.
"In the last hour of our hostage crisis, the gunman became increasingly belligerent and threatening," Cytron-Walker said in a statement. "Without the instruction we received, we would not have been prepared to act and flee when the situation presented itself."
Video of the standoff's end from Dallas TV station WFAA showed people running out a door of the synagogue, and then a man holding a gun opening the same door just seconds later before he turned around and closed it. Moments later, several shots and then an explosion could be heard.
Authorities have declined to say who shot Akram, saying it was still under investigation.
Federal investigators believe Akram purchased the handgun used in the hostage-taking in a private sale, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Akram arrived in the U.S. at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York about two weeks ago, a law enforcement official said.
Akram arrived in the U.S. recently on a tourist visa from Great Britain, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended to be public. London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement that its counter-terrorism police were liaising with U.S. authorities about the incident.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt DeSarno had said Saturday night that the hostage-taker was specifically focused on an issue not directly connected to the Jewish community. It wasn't clear why Akram chose the synagogue, though the prison where Siddiqui is serving her sentence is in Fort Worth.
On Sunday night, the FBI issued a statement calling the ordeal "a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted." The agency said the Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating.
Michael Finfer, the president of the congregation, said in a statement "there was a one in a million chance that the gunman picked our congregation."
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