British police said on Friday they accidentally shot a victim who died in the attack on a synagogue in Manchester, as well as one of the survivors, as they attempted to stop an attacker who appeared to be wearing an explosive belt.

In Thursday’s attack, Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, were killed after a British man of Syrian descent drove a car into pedestrians and then began stabbing people outside Manchester’s Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

The attacker, shot dead by officers at the scene, was not carrying a firearm, said Greater Manchester Police chief constable Steve Watson, though one of those killed suffered a gunshot wound.

“It follows, therefore, this injury may have been sustained as a tragic and unforeseen consequence of the urgently required action taken by my officers to bring this vicious attack to an end,” Watson said in a statement.

The attack comes as Israel has drawn widespread criticism over its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 66,000 people since October 7, 2023.

UK vows to crack down on antisemitism

Watson said another worshipper is believed to have suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, and that it is thought both victims were close together behind the synagogue door, as worshippers tried to prevent the attacker from gaining entry.

The police complaints watchdog said it was carrying out an investigation into what happened.

Police have named the attacker as Jihad al-Shamie, 35, and said they could find no records to show he had been referred to the government’s anti-radicalisation programme.

In a statement on Facebook, Shamie’s family said they were in “profound shock” and wanted to distance themselves from what they called his “heinous act”.

The British government vowed to redouble its efforts to tackle antisemitism as the Jewish community reeled from the attack.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the site of the attack and spoke with police and ambulance workers, praising “the degree of professionalism and speed” they showed in their response.

When Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy spoke at a vigil outside the synagogue on Friday, he was heckled by people who said “Jews don’t want to live here anymore” and urged him to stop the pro-Palestinian marches that have taken place in British cities regularly since the start of the genocide in Gaza.

Britain, like other European countries and the United States, has recorded a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in the nearly two years since the conflict began.

Last year was the second-worst on record for such incidents, surpassed only by 2023, according to the Community Security Trust, which provides security to Jewish organisations across Britain. It recorded more than 3,500 incidents in 2024.

Many Jewish leaders noted that they were the only faith in Britain that routinely required security at its institutions.

Islamophobic incidents in Britain have also increased since the start of the Gaza conflict.

Last month, Starmer announced that Britain was recognising a Palestinian state in the hope of reviving peace for Palestinians and Israelis, a decision decried by Israel as a “huge reward to terrorism”.

Pro-Palestinian protests

Israel has accused Britain of allowing rampant antisemitism to spread through its cities and universities, and repeated that criticism after Thursday’s attack.

Police, meanwhile, urged organisers of a planned protest in support of a banned pro-Palestinian group in London this weekend to cancel or postpone the event, saying it would divert police resources needed to protect fearful communities.

Organisers said the protest, the latest in a series in which police have arrested more than 1,500 people, would go ahead, and that it was the police’s choice whether to make more arrests of people “peacefully holding signs”.

Manchester, in northwestern England, is a highly diverse city home to the country’s largest Jewish community outside London.

On Friday morning, there was a heavy police presence at the scene of the attack, with debris still lying in the street and bunches of flowers being left nearby.