Biden to visit New Orleans after deadly truck attack as investigations continue – latest updates

Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, will travel to New Orleans on Monday, the White House has announced.

A statement reads:

The President and First Lady will grieve with the families and community members impacted by the tragic attack on January 1 and meet with officials on the ground.

The deadly New Year’s Day terrorist attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas have brought renewed attention to the scourge of extremism in the US military, but efforts to tackle it wilted in the later years of the Biden administration, and are unlikely to be revived once Donald Trump begins his second term this month.

Both the New Orleans vehicle attack that killed 14, and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas in which the driver died, were perpetrated by discharged or serving members of the armed forces.

Though investigators have yet to officially link the events, they follow a pattern of active or veteran military personnel involvement in acts of domestic terrorism, including the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot; a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; and the 2009 mass shooting at the former Fort Hood army base in Texas that killed 13.

In response to the series of deadly events, the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, promised to tackle longstanding failures by the US military to address the problem. That effort, however, fizzled.

Its demise, which was never publicly announced, came just weeks after the publication of a report to Congress by the inspector general of the US defense department that detailed 183 investigations of alleged extremism within military ranks.

Victims and witnesses of the Bourbon Street attack are exhibiting signs of “acute stress responses”, according to a trauma psychologist.

“Some people are having intrusive thoughts about what happened, a lot of grief and mourning,” Erika Rajo told CNN.

Some people are having physical symptoms. A lot of people are reminded of the trauma from TV or just being in New Orleans.

Muslim scholars have widely rejected the extremist positions the Islamic State or those who sympathize with the terrorist group have with respect to the religion, saying Islam teaches mercy and peace as well as the importance of justice.

Alluding to reports that Shamsud-Din Jabbar had previously faced accusations of engaging in some of the behavior he condemns in the recordings, including drunk-driving and spousal abuse, a statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Thursday said:

His crime is the latest example of why cruel, merciless, bottom-feeding extremist groups have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world – from Islamic scholars, to mosques, to organizations and to individual Muslims.

“We strongly denounce this crime, [and] we stand in solidarity with the people of New Orleans,” said the organization, calling on people who could help investigators capture any potential accomplices of Jabbar to come forward.

Nearly a year before he allegedly killed 14 people and injured dozens more by driving a pickup truck flying an Islamic State (IS) flag through a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar expressed his beliefs that music, intoxicants, sex and other pleasures were evils deserving of destruction.

An account on the SoundCloud platform under the name of Jabbar posted three recordings totaling about 20 minutes each containing those and other expressions of extremist religious views. SoundCloud did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The voice on the recordings match that of Jabbar’s as heard on a video promoting a real-estate business he was confirmed to have run before authorities say he aimed a deadly terrorist attack at one of the world’s most famous festive drags, killing or injuring a mix of local area residents and foreign visitors.

The audio establishes that Jabbar was openly detailing extremist religious views by about February 2024, though relatively few observers had taken note, with the recordings collectively garnering fewer than 300 listens as of Thursday morning. The account had two followers while following various Muslim-related accounts on the platform.

A mix of law enforcement, street performers and football fans has filled New Orleans’ blocks as the city inches back to normality while mourning victims of the deadly New Year’s rampage in which a US army veteran plowed a truck into revelers, reports the Associated Press (AP).

The attack along Bourbon Street killed 14 people and injured at least 30 people. Officials said the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was inspired by the Islamic State militant group. Jabbar was fatally shot in a firefight with police after steering his speeding truck around a barricade and plowing into the crowd.

According to the AP, authorities finished processing the scene on Thursday morning, removing the last of the bodies. Bourbon Street – famous worldwide for music, open-air drinking and festive vibes – reopened for business by early afternoon.

On the same block where the attack took place, trombone player and lifelong New Orleanian Jonas Green told the AP that it was important for his band to be out there the day after the violence. “I know with this music, it heals, it transforms the feelings that we’re going through into something better,” Green said. “Got to keep on going.”

The Sugar Bowl college football game between Notre Dame and Georgia, which was postponed by a day in the interest of national security, was played on Thursday evening.

The Joan of Arc parade in the French Quarter is still scheduled to take place on Monday to kick off carnival season ahead of Mardi Gras, said Antoinette de Alteriis, one of the organisers. She told the news agency that they expect close to its typical crowd in the thousands.

On Bourbon Street, flowers and candles were arranged as memorials to the victims, while yellow posts were set up on the surrounding blocks.

Mark Tabor, the manager of a Willie’s Chicken Shack on Bourbon Street, said it was strange to feel the disconnect between the normal hustle of the French Quarter outside and the violence he had witnessed less than 48 hours earlier.

“I’m glad they cleaned up the streets, but it’s like everything’s forgotten,” he told the AP. “It’s sad.”

Military records and media interviews are painting a clearer portrait of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old Texas man accused of crashing a truck into New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans, killing at least 14 people.

Jabbar served in the US army for 13 years, including a deployment to Afghanistan. On Thursday, the FBI said investigators believe Jabbar acted alone when he attacked the busy intersection of Bourbon and Canal streets. Officials had earlier said they believed Jabbar had accomplices.

The FBI has said Jabbar had a flag of Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim militant group, on his truck and the bureau is treating the attack as an act of terrorism.

The FBI also announced that it had found no definitive link between the New Orleans attack and the explosion that occurred later on Wednesday outside a hotel owned by Donald Trump in Las Vegas.

Jabbar appears to have been born and raised in Beaumont, Texas.

He served in the army as a human resource specialist and information technology specialist from 2007 until 2015, according to an army official, and deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.

He joined the army reserve as an IT specialist until 2020, holding the rank of staff sergeant at the end of service, according to the army official.

In addition to serving in the army, Jabbar had previously enlisted in the navy in August 2004 under a delayed entry program but was discharged a month later, a navy official told Reuters.

Jabbar graduated with a computer information systems degree from Georgia State University after studying there from 2015 to 2017, school officials told Atlanta News First.

The victims of the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans make up a tragic but vivid tapestry of the characteristically cosmopolitan crowd that descends on the city’s famous French Quarter to celebrate any occasion.

Authorities have not yet released the names of those killed in the suspected terrorist attack, which killed at least 14 people and injured dozens more, but details have emerged as family members and friends speak out.

Local media in New Orleans first identified Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux, 18, who had traveled to the city from nearby Gulfport, Mississippi, with a cousin and a friend; Reggie Hunter, a 37-year-old father of two from Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Tiger Bech, a Lafayette, Louisiana, native and former football player in his late 20s.

A fourth victim was named as Nicole Perez, a 28-year-old mother and delicatessen manager from Metairie, Louisiana, who was celebrating the new year with friends. Hubert Gauthreaux, 21, and Kareem Badawi, 18, were identified as victims by their former high schools and by their families.

Also killed was Matthew Tenedorio, 25, an audiovisual technician who had gone out with friends, according to his family, and Billy DiMaio, 25, a New York-based account executive who had travelled to New Orleans to celebrate the new year with friends.

As their deaths were confirmed, families and loved ones from across the US honored those killed.

You can read the full piece by Anna Betts, Marina Dunbar and Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans below:

This is the Guardian’s latest blog on the developments after the deadly truck attack in New Orleans during the early hours of New Year’s Day.

Authorities are continuing to investigate the path to radicalization of the suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native who once served in Afghanistan.

The FBI now says it believes he acted alone and at present there does not appear to be a link with the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a hotel owned by US president-elect Donald Trump in Las Vegas.

The Cybertruck driver has been identified as Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty Army soldier from Colorado Springs, and police said he acted alone. Livelsberger killed himself with a gunshot, police said, and was inside the vehicle when gasoline canisters and large firework mortars in the truck bed exploded.

While the attacks have not been linked, the military ties of the two men will be an area of concern for investigators.

There will also be questions over whether more should have been done to protect revellers in the Bourbon Street area of New Orleans as it emerged that many of the bollards designed to stop vehicle attacks were not operational. You can read more here: