Army Veteran Who Killed 15 in US Attack Was Inspired by IS

A US Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year's revelers in New Orleans, killing 15 people, had posted videos to social media hours before the carnage saying he was inspired by the Islamic State (IS) group and expressing a desire to kill, the president said.

- Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS:

The FBI said it was investigating early Wednesday's attack in which the driver steered around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police as a terrorist act and did not believe he acted alone.

Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle — which bore the flag of the Islamic State group — along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the city's famed French Quarter.

President Joe Biden said on Wednesday evening that the FBI found the videos the driver posted to social media. He called the attack a "despicable" and "heinous act".

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.

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 people killed.

"This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil," New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.