The attack killed 14 revellers, along with Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, who was fatally shot in a firefight with police after steering his speeding truck around a barricade and ploughing into the crowd. About 30 people were injured.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recovered the two IEDs that Shamsud Din Jabbar, a US Army veteran loyal to the Islamic State terrorist group, placed in the coolers, CNN reported.
“They have established that the attacker is the same person who planted the explosives in those ice coolers in two nearby locations in the French Quarter just a few hours before he rammed into the crowd with his vehicle. They assessed he had a remote detonator in his vehicle to set off those two ice chests,” Joe Biden told reporters.
The US president also told reporters gathered in the White House’s East Room that he’ will try to travel to New Orleans.
The FBI has established that Shamsud Din Jabbar, who carried out this “act of terrorism”, was an ISIS supporter. An ISIS flag was found in his vehicle, and the suspect had admitted his support in a series of videos he posted online.
Biden reassured that the US will relentlessly pursue ISIS and other terrorist organisation. “We are going to relentlessly pursue ISIS and other terrorist organisations where they are and they will find no safe husher here,” Biden said.
FBI says driver acted alone and was ‘100%’ inspired by Islamic State
The FBI also revealed that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an American citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack in which he proclaimed his support for the ISIS and previewed the violence that he would soon unleash in the famed French Quarter district.
“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” said Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, calling Jabbar “100% inspired” by the Islamic State.
FBI on Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside Las Vegas hotel
Raia stressed that there was no indication of a connection between the New Orleans attack and the explosion Wednesday of a Tesla Cybertruck filled with explosives outside Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. The person inside that truck, a decorated US Army Green Beret, shot himself in the head just before detonation, authorities said.
The FBI continued to hunt for clues about Jabbar but said a day into its investigation, the agency was confident he was not aided by anyone else in the attack, which killed an 18-year-old aspiring nurse, a single mother, a father of two and a former Princeton University football star, among others.
(With inputs from agencies)
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