An upstate New York man who opened fire outside a synagogue filled with preschoolers just weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war will spend the next decade in federal prison.

Mufid Alkhader, 29, was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years behind bars for a December 2023 attack on Temple Israel of Albany, where 61 children and their teachers were forced into lockdown as he fired a shotgun and shouted “Free Palestine!”

The chilling assault — which came just hours before the first night of Chanukah — ended without physical injuries, but left deep emotional scars.

“My daughter was in Hebrew class with her teacher, whose own child was on the other side of the building,” congregant Rachel Mandel said in court. “Her amazing teacher held, hid, and comforted my child. She prepared herself and the children in her care to die as victims of hate.”

According to prosecutors, Alkhader fired two rounds into the air before his weapon jammed, then ranted about the Middle East when arrested. The Palestinian-born gunman had acquired the firearm through a straw purchase — for which another man was sentenced to 14 months in prison last year.

Alkhader pleaded guilty in February to obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs by threat of force, brandishing a firearm during that crime, and conspiring to buy a gun illegally. Prosecutors pushed for the maximum, arguing he intended to terrorize the Jewish congregation.

“He wanted to scare the people in that building — and scare them he did,” prosecutor Richard Belliss told the court.

Defense attorneys cited Alkhader’s severe mental illness and urged leniency. But U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci rejected a lighter sentence, saying the trauma inflicted on the children and staff warranted the full decade in prison.

In a brief statement, wearing an orange jail shirt, Alkhader told the court he was “not in [his] right mind” at the time of the attack and asked for forgiveness.

Alkhader, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp near Baghdad, came to the U.S. as a refugee in 2012 and became a naturalized citizen in 2014. At the time of the shooting, he lived in nearby Schenectady.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)