Around 3:15 a.m. (09:15 a.m. GMT), at the wheel of a pick-up, he drove into the crowd wandering in the “Vieux Carré”, the French Quarter, trying to “crush as many people as he could” , indicated on Wednesday morning a local police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick. “He was fiercely determined to cause carnage,” insisted the official, calling the man a “terrorist”.
After knocking down, killing and injuring dozens of bystanders, the man was shot dead in a shootout with police. Two police officers were injured.
Referring to a “despicable attack”, US President Joe Biden addressed the country early in the evening. He stressed that the suspect, shot dead by police, had “published videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by the Islamic State” and that he had a “desire to kill”.
Investigators are working “to determine the individual’s possible associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations” and claim to be looking for accomplices in the attack in Louisiana, without giving details.
Explosion in Las Vegas
President Joe Biden said authorities were investigating whether there was a “connection” between the attack in New Orleans and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas that caused a dead.
The vehicles involved in both incidents were rented through the ride-sharing app Turo.
Las Vegas sheriff says it was a 'coincidence' […] that we must continue to examine.” A spokesperson for the app, used by millions of people in the United States, said it was working with law enforcement. “We do not believe that either client had a criminal history that would have identified them as a security threat.”
-The attack comes less than three weeks before the transfer of power between Democratic President Joe Biden and his elected Republican successor Donald Trump, in an electric political climate.
Flag of Daesh
Shamsud-Din Jabbar was in the army from 2007 to 2015, including a deployment to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, finishing as a master sergeant, according to the Ministry of Defense. His brother Abdur Jabbar described him as “a sweetheart”, telling the “New York Times” that he had converted to Islam at a young age, speaking of “a form of radicalization”.
A childhood friend who found him in 2017 told the newspaper that the suspect had become “really intense” about his faith.
The FBI said that “a Daesh jihadist flag was in his vehicle” and that two improvised explosive devices found in the car and in the neighborhood had been defused. An FBI official on site, Alethea Duncan, told the press “not to think that Jabbar was the only one responsible” and considered that he would have acted with “potential accomplices”.
Political recovery
President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on denouncing illegal immigration, made the link with the millions of illegal immigrants in the United States: he affirmed, without proof, on his Truth Social network that “the criminals who arrive (in the United States) are much worse than the criminals we have in our country.”
The attack took place in the “French Quarter” of New Orleans, a neighborhood that never sleeps all year round, especially on New Year's Eve, between Canal and Bourbon Street. Renowned for its restaurants, bars and jazz clubs, this district, which looks like a small French colonial town, also hosts cabarets and places frequented by the LGBT+ community.
