FBI Probes ISIS Angle In New Orleans Assault, Witnesses Describe ‘Madness’

Listed below are the important thing developments

• 1. Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick stated the person, “hell-bent on carnage”, was attempting to run over as many individuals as he may within the metropolis’s well-known French Quarter, an space that was full of individuals celebrating the beginning of 2025.
  2. The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of terrorism. The attacker as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old “US citizen from Texas”. Officers stated he won’t have been performing alone. “An ISIS flag was situated within the car, and the FBI is working to find out the topic’s potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations,” the FBI stated in an announcement. He served greater than 10 years within the navy as a human useful resource specialist and an IT specialist, in keeping with the Pentagon, which stated Jabbar deployed to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010.
  3. In a video posted on YouTube 4 years in the past, Jabbar — talking with a southern US accent — boasted of his expertise as a “fierce negotiator” as he marketed his property administration providers to potential purchasers. Prison data reported by the New York Instances present that Jabbar had two earlier prices for minor offenses — one in 2002 for theft and one other in 2005 for driving with an invalid license. Jabbar was twice-married, in keeping with the newspaper, together with his second marriage ending in divorce in 2022, when he detailed experiencing monetary issues in an electronic mail to his spouse’s lawyer. “I can’t afford the home cost,” he reportedly wrote, including that his actual property firm had misplaced greater than $28,000 within the earlier 12 months, and that he had taken on 1000’s in bank card debt to pay for attorneys.
  4. President Joe Biden stated, “There is no such thing as a justification for violence of any form, and we is not going to tolerate any assault on any of our nation’s communities,.”
  5. President-elect Donald Trump linked the assault to unlawful immigration. “Once I stated that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals now we have within the nation… it turned out to be true,” Trump posted on social media. Whereas the FBI has stated that violent crime has sharply come down throughout the US, Mr Trump stated the nation’s crime price “is at a degree that no one has ever seen.”
  6. Witnesses described terrifying scenes of “madness” that they likened to being in a “conflict zone”. Zion Parsons instructed CNN, “It was similar to a film. That is the one means I can clarify it.” He stated the truck threw our bodies within the air in its wake. “There have been our bodies and blood and all of the trash,” he stated, describing scenes of victims crying on the bottom within the fetal place after the truck had handed.
  7. The incident got here amid 100 per cent staffing, with an extra 300 officers aiding from associate legislation enforcement companies. It got here on a day the French Quarter listed particular offers for New 12 months’s, together with LGBTQ events and a drag cabaret close by the place the incident occurred. It additionally got here shortly earlier than town hosts a serious soccer recreation, often known as the Sugar Bowl, that includes groups from the College of Georgia and Notre Dame.
  8. Worldwide condemnation poured with French President Emmanuel Macron stated his ideas are with the households of the victims and the injured. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X, “We belief that these answerable for this horrible act will likely be delivered to justice. Violence, terrorism, and any threats to human life don’t have any place in our world and should not be tolerated. Our deepest condolences to the households of the victims… Ukraine stands with the American individuals and denounces violence.”
  9. In a separate incident, at the least one particular person was killed and 7 wounded when a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outdoors a resort belonging to US President-elect Donald Trump in Las Vegas, police stated Wednesday. US President Joe Biden stated authorities have been investigating any hyperlinks between the Las Vegas explosion and the New Orleans assault.
  10. The FBI and native legislation enforcement stated they believed the Tesla blast was an remoted incident. Nonetheless, Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk alleged a connection between the Las Vegas and New Orleans assaults. “Seems more likely to be an act of terrorism. Each this Cybertruck and the F-150 suicide bomb in New Orleans have been rented from Turo. Maybe they’re linked indirectly,” Musk wrote on X.