The FBI has said that an ISIS flag was found on the pick-up truck driven by Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, an Army veteran who caused carnage in New Orleans’ busy French Quarter district on New Year’s Day – while surveillance footage showed four others involved in placing at least one of multiple explosive devices in the area.
At least 15 people were killed and 35 others injured when Jabbar drove the vehicle at pedestrians in the early hours of New Year’s Day. The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism and said it does not believe Jabbar acted alone.
Jabbar, 42, a US national who served in the military, also had improvised explosives in the rented pick-up, and was dressed in “full military gear” when he emerged from the vehicle before being shot dead in a shootout with police.
The FBI has said that potential explosive devices were found in the French Quarter, with Associated Press reporting that a Louisiana State Police intelligence bulletin said that surveillance footage showed three men and a woman placing one of multiple improvised explosive devices in the area.
Jabbar enlisted in the U.S. Army in March 2007, where he worked in human resources and then in information technology. He was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010 – and left the military in July 2020, having achieved a rank of staff sergeant.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said that Jabbar “was trying to run over as many people as he could.” She described his actions as “very intentional behaviour”.
“This particular terrorist drove around onto the sidewalk and got around the hard target. We did have a car there. We had barriers there. We had officers there. And they still got around,” she said later in the day.
After ploughing through the crowd in the French Quarter, he exited his vehicle and fired at police officers, striking two of them, Kirkpatrick said. The two police officers wounded were in a stable condition.
“He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” Kirkpatrick added.
U.S. authorities are now also looking into a “possible military connection” between Jabbar and the driver of a Tesla cybertruck that exploded outside one of Donald Trump’s hotels in Las Vegas, according to NBC News reports.