A US Army veteran with an Islamic State flag and “hellbent” on carnage steered a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers in New Orleans on Wednesday, killing at least 15 persons and wounding dozens, officials said.
The FBI identified the attacker as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old US citizen from Texas. He appeared to have been a real estate agent working in Houston and had served as an IT specialist in the military.
Officials said they were searching for accomplices but gave few details.
Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick described Jabbar as a “terrorist,” and the FBI said “an ISIS flag was located in the vehicle,” using another name for the Islamic State jihadist group.
US President Joe Biden, describing the attack as “despicable,” said Jabbar had posted videos online hours before “indicating that he was inspired by ISIS.”
Biden said law enforcement agencies were probing a possible link between the attack and the explosion later on Wednesday of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a hotel owned by US President-elect Donald Trump in Las Vegas that killed one person, although he cautioned that no link had been found so far.
Officials said a manhunt was underway, with FBI agent Alethea Duncan warning that authorities “do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible.”
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry said: “We’re hunting some bad people down.”
The FBI said it was conducting searches in New Orleans “and other states.” Earlier, the bureau’s field office in Houston said it was conducting activity “related” to the New Orleans attack.
An FBI spokesperson told AFP that 15 people were killed in the attack, citing the New Orleans coroner’s office.
Aiming for carnage
Police said the incident began at around 3:15 a.m. Wednesday (5:15 p.m. in Manila) on Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter that was packed with people celebrating the new year.
The suspect drove a white Ford F-150 electric pickup into a crowd of pedestrians, then exited the vehicle and was killed in a shootout with policemen, two of whom were wounded. Two homemade bombs were found and neutralized, the FBI said.
“The man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could,” Kirkpatrick told reporters.
Driving at “very high speed” and in a “very intentional” manner, “he was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick said.
The Pentagon said Jabbar had served in the US Army as a human resources and IT specialist from 2007 to 2015, and then in the army reserve until 2020.
He deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 until January 2010, an army spokesperson said.
Biden said that “thus far, there’s nothing” linking the New Orleans attack to the Las Vegas explosion, which police described as an “isolated” incident.
The vehicles in the two incidents were both rented through the popular car-sharing app Turo. The sheriff in Las Vegas said that was a “coincidence that we have to continue to look into.”
A spokesperson for the app, used by millions of people in the United States, said they were working with law enforcement.
“We do not believe that either renter had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat,” the spokesperson told AFP.