London (AFP) — The attacker who targeted the British synagogue, Jihad al-Shamie, was a British citizen of Syrian descent who liked weightlifting and came from a “nice family”, U.K. media and officials reported Friday.

Police late Thursday had named 35-year-old Shamie as the perpetrator of the attack in Manchester, in which two people were killed and three others seriously wounded.

Shamie entered the United Kingdom as a small child and was granted British citizenship in 2006 when he was around 16.

His family has lived in the Manchester area for at least 30 years and currently reside in the town of Prestwich, some three kilometres (two miles) from the scene of the attack, in the Manchester suburb of Crumpsall, the Daily Mail reported.

ITV News reported the attacker was “understood to hav

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