Suggestions that the terrorist responsible for New Year attack on New Orleans had links to Islamic State (IS) show that the threat posed by Islamist militants cannot be ignored, even though the world’s attention has been so diverted of late.
The focus for much of the 2020s has been on more conventional conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, but events in New Orleans’ French Quarter on New Year’s Day has swiftly altered both the mood and the threat level.
US-born Shamsun-Din Jabbar, 42, who was killed in a shoot-out with police, is the key suspect in the truck attack in the city’s famous Bourbon Street district that killed 15 and injured 30.
Police have now revealed that he had an IS flag on his vehicle and posted pro-IS videos on social media before the attack, in which he used his truck to plough into people celebrating the start of 2025. The truck was also found to contain a potential improvised explosive device (IED).
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A Texas-born American citizen and Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, Jabbar was working as an estate agent and is reported to have been in financial difficulty and recently divorced at the time of the attack.
Since the attack, the FBI has reported that other potential IEDs have been found in the southern city’s French Quarter. Pipe bombs with nails and suspected C4 explosives were found in an ice chest left near police cars at the corner of Bourbon Street and Orleans Street, near where the pick-up truck attack took place.
