The death toll from the New Orleans attack is rising: at least 15 people are dead , according to Dr. Dwight McKenna, the city's medical examiner. About 30 people have been injured.

Joe Biden spoke last night, providing an identikit of the attacker: "The FBI told me that he was an American citizen, he had served in the US Army and had been in the reserve until a few years ago and that he posted videos on social media before the attack in which he said he wanted to kill. He was inspired by ISIS , investigators will continue to investigate to look for possible accomplices".

Shamsud-Din Jabbar converted to Islam after being honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, where he served for 10 years (2006 to 2015), including a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009, rising to the rank of staff sergeant. He had two daughters, ages 15 and 20.

Dwayne Marsh, who married his ex-wife Nakedra Charrlle, told the NYT that Jabbar had been acting erratically in recent months, "he was all crazy, cutting his hair" after his conversion. Because of this, he and his wife stopped allowing their daughters to spend time with him.

The New Year's Eve massacre took place in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the tourist heart of the city. Here, between Bourbon Street and Canal Street, shortly after three in the morning between the 31st and the 1st, a white pick-up truck (with a black ISIS flag on the rear bumper) at full speed mowed down people celebrating New Year's Eve . The assailant, at the end of his mad dash, shot from the car with an assault rifle but was killed by the officers , two of whom were hit but not seriously.

The federal police soon took over the investigation and cordoned off the area, defusing two improvised explosive devices found in the pickup, which could have caused an even heavier toll if they had exploded . Other rudimentary bombs were discovered in the French Quarter.

The hypothesis is that the attack involved more people. " We do not believe that Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar is the sole perpetrator ," said the assistant special agent of the FBI Alethea Duncan in a press conference.

Meanwhile, controversy over security is erupting. An eyewitness who was on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve told CNN that the mechanical steel barricades had not been assembled and in place before the attack . “Those barricades were just not assembled,” said Jimmy Cothran, a New Orleans resident of 15 years. “They had the flimsy orange ones that you could just push with your finger. We actually thought that was a little weird,” he added. The steel barricades were installed in 2017, following a 2016 vehicle attack in Nice, France. It later emerged that the barrier system was being repaired in preparation for the city’s Super Bowl final in February .

(Unioneonline/L)

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