A US Army veteran who drove a pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans, killing 15 people, had posted videos to social media hours before the carnage saying he was inspired by the Islamic State group and expressing a desire to kill, the president says.
The FBI said it was investigating early Wednesday’s attack in which the driver steered around a police blockade and slammed into revellers before being shot dead by police as a terrorist act and did not believe he acted alone.
Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle - which bore the flag of the Islamic State group - along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the city’s famed French Quarter.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening the FBI found the videos the driver posted to social media.
He called the attack a “despicable” and “heinous act”.
The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre scene of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants.
Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “barrelling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air”.
“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among the people killed.
“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.
The attack is the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence and the deadliest IS-inspired assault on US soil in years.
The driver “defeated” safety measures in place to protect pedestrians, Kirkpatrick said, and was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did”.
The FBI identified the driver as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a US citizen from Texas, and said it was working to determine any potential associations with terrorist organisations.
“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible," FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan said at a news conference.
Investigators found improvised explosives, including two pipe bombs in portable coolers that were wired for remote detonation, according to a Louisiana State Police intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.
Jabbar drove a rented pick-up truck onto a footpath, going around a police car that was positioned to block traffic, authorities said.
A barrier system meant to prevent vehicle attacks was being repaired in preparation for the Super Bowl in February.
Police killed Jabbar after he exited the truck and opened fire on responding officers, Kirkpatrick said, injuring two of them.
Investigators recovered a handgun and AR-style rifle, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
There were also deadly explosions in Honolulu and outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden said the FBI was looking into whether the Las Vegas explosion was connected to the New Orleans attack but had “nothing to report” as of Wednesday evening.
A photo circulated among law enforcement officials showed a bearded Jabbar wearing camouflage after he was killed, and the intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP said he wore a ballistic vest and helmet.
The flag of the Islamic State group was on the truck's trailer hitch, the FBI said.
Jabbar joined the army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said.
He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.
Biden addressed the victims and the people of New Orleans: “I want you to know I grieve with you. Our nation grieves with you as you mourn and as you heal.”
FBI officials have warned about an elevated international terrorism threat due to the Israel-Hamas war.
In the past year, the agency has disrupted other potential attacks, including in October when it arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma for an alleged election day plot targeting large crowds.
