Man behind deadly New Orleans rampage acted alone, FBI now says

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Officials fanned out to serve search warrants and spent hours at a Houston-area home thought to be connected to the investigation. But as of Thursday morning, no additional arrests were known to have been made, and it was unclear if the FBI was still actively looking for more suspects.

The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre scene of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead, dozens of people were hurt.

Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, in an undated passport photo provided by the FBI.Credit: AP

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 dead.

But by Thursday, a still-reeling city was inching back toward normal operations. Authorities finished processing the scene early in the morning, removing the last of the bodies, and Bourbon Street was set to reopen at some point later in the day, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, postponed by a day in the interest of national security, was still on for Thursday. And the city planned to host the Super Bowl next month.

Federal officials were investigating Jabbar’s potential associations with any terror organisations as they hunted for additional clues in what’s believed to be the deadliest IS-inspired assault on US soil in years.

Local officials, meanwhile, faced more questions about security protocols in the city leading up to the attack, the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence.

Jabbar drove a rented pickup truck onto a sidewalk, going around a police car that was positioned to block vehicular traffic, authorities said. A barrier system meant to prevent vehicle attacks was being repaired in preparation for the Super Bowl.

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The driver “defeated” safety measures in place to protect pedestrians and was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.

A photo circulated among law enforcement officials showed a bearded Jabbar wearing camouflage next to the truck after he was killed. The intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP said he was wearing 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.

FBI officials have repeatedly warned about an elevated international terrorism threat due to the Israel-Hamas war. In the last 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.

AP

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