Ivan Telzer was in the middle of his prayers at the Heaton Park Congregation’s synagogue in Manchester, England, when people started shouting.
“Shut the doors!” they cried. “Shut the doors!”
Mr. Telzer said he could hear someone pounding from outside, trying to get in the synagogue. Some of the roughly 20 congregants who had gathered for morning services on Yom Kippur, including the rabbi, used their bodies to barricade the large black doors, he said.
The police later identified the person outside as Jihad al-Shamie, a Syrian-born British citizen who carried out a terrorist attack on Thursday in a city that is home to Britain’s second-largest Jewish community.
Within minutes, amid the panic inside the synagogue, Mr. Telzer saw one of the congregants slump to the floor, he recalled in an interview. The police said on Friday that the person was one of two who had accidentally been struck by police bullets as officers shot at Mr. al-Shamie. One was wounded and the other died, the police said.
The attack started, the authorities said, at 9:31 a.m., when Mr. al-Shamie rammed his car into people outside the synagogue before getting out and stabbing victims with a knife. The rampage was over within seven minutes, after the police shot and killed him. Two men, Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, died at the scene, though it was unclear which one was killed by a police bullet.
The police have not released the names of the people who were injured, including the one who was wounded by a bullet.
The attack shattered a community where many Orthodox Jews have lived peacefully near large numbers of Muslim and Sikh neighbors. The headline in The Jewish Telegraph, a British newspaper, captured the sense of shock, using the Yiddish word for a place of worship: “TERROR AT SHUL GATES.”
Jewish residents said that antisemitism had been significantly higher since the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people and prompted Israel’s subsequent two-year bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000. But they said they had never expected an attack like the one on Thursday.
“It was shocking,” Anne Goldstone, 67, said as she drank coffee on Friday morning at a local bakery, where three armed guards stood outside. “But,” she acknowledged, “it was kind of a bit of an inevitability. You know, we thought — we were always worried.”
Nati Azar, 47, lives near the synagogue and heard the gunshots on Thursday morning. He said the war in Gaza had intensified fears among Jewish people about how they were viewed far from Israel.
“Everyone is scared and worried,” he said. “People don’t like us because of the Middle East war.” He added, “We don’t know when the next attack is going to come.”
The synagogue where the attack took place is near the neighborhoods of Cheetham Hill, Broughton Park and Crumpsall, an area that has historically been home to large Jewish populations. It includes the Manchester Jewish Museum, which is housed in a 19th-century Sephardic synagogue.
As people resumed work on Friday following the Yom Kippur holiday, police officers wearing bright yellow vests were conspicuous at the entrances to many Jewish schools, synagogues, retail stores and cultural centers. A vigil was scheduled for later in the afternoon.
Mr. Cravitz, one of the victims, “did not have a single bad bone in his body,” said Avrom Baker, 63, a care worker who used to look after Mr. Cravitz’s mother at a nursing home. Others said that Mr. Cravitz had worked as a delivery driver and at a local supermarket.
He had semiretired around three years ago, but he still helped out in the store, as well as at a local food bank and at the synagogue, his former boss at the supermarket, David Salzman, said.
“He was a devoted son,” Mr. Baker said. “He did not deserve to get killed.”
Mr. Telzer, who was inside the synagogue when the attack happened, went to work on Friday at a local supermarket to keep his mind off the tragedy.
But the attack stuck with him, he said, and he was afraid to be alone.
“I’m scared to go to the synagogue,” he said. “I’m just scared.”
Michael D. Shear is a senior Times correspondent covering British politics and culture, and diplomacy around the world.
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome.
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