At least 10 killed and 35 injured in New Orleans as car drives into crowd

At least 10 people have been killed and 35 injured after a vehicle drove into a crowd in New Orleans’s tourist district in the early hours of New Year’s Day, according to officials, with media reporting the driver later fired a gun.

The city’s disaster preparedness agency, Nola Ready, released a statement on a “mass casualty incident involving a vehicle that drove into a large crowd on Canal and Bourbon Street”. The area is part of city’s French Quarter, which is a popular nightlife destination.

The New Orleans police superintendent, Anne Kirkpatrick, said in a news conference on Wednesday morning: “It was very intentional behavior. This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could. He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”

The driver of the pickup truck has been named as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a senior law enforcement source confirmed to the Guardian. Jabbar, a US citizen and a Texas resident, was shot dead after exchanging gunfire with police, New Orleans police said.

The senior law enforcement source briefed on the attack told the Guardian the driver was equipped with a rifle, a helmet and body armor. The source and a separate criminal justice source said the truck had a black flag and the FBI confirmed it was an Islamic state flag.

The source also said that a short-term rental linked to the suspect in New Orleans’s St Roch neighborhood, less than two miles from the scene of the incident, was on fire Wednesday morning. The fire was first reported at 5.18am local time, just over two hours after the vehicle incident. An official at the scene told the Guardian that the FBI will address the fire at a later news briefing.

An emergency management source said that numerous residents in the area surrounding the home were evacuated, because there were apparently explosives inside the home.

The owner of the home did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nearby, federal agents were interviewing neighbors, and bomb-sniffing dogs could be seen being led to the property.

The FBI, which is now leading the investigation, said in a statement that “an individual drove a car into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing a number of people and injuring dozens of others. The subject then engaged with local law enforcement and is now deceased.”

The bureau added that it is “working with our partners to investigate this as an act of terrorism”.

CBS News and CNN cited witnesses reporting that the driver had also fired a gun.

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Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said officials were investigating the discovery of at least one suspected improvised explosive device (IED) at the scene.

The senior law enforcement source who spoke with the Guardian said the IED in question was in the form of an ice chest that had been abandoned at the corner of Bourbon and Orleans streets, several blocks away from the intersection of Canal. The source said investigators were assessing whether the attacker had help.

According to the source, investigators suspect Jabbar had previously spent time in the military. A photo of Jabbar after he had been killed by police showed him in military-style clothing and New Orleans city council member Oliver Thomas told reporters later Wednesday that Jabbar was in military garb.

The source also said that the number of dead could later be adjusted to about 15, with officials still working to verify preliminary information. The source said the slain victims died from both gunfire as well as being struck by the attacker’s vehicle.

People are advised to stay away from the area around Bourbon Street to St Ann. “We do not want anyone on Bourbon Street today,” police superintendent Kirkpatrick said, confirming that the FBI is taking over the investigation.

The police chief said two police officers had been shot and were in stable condition at an area hospital. The police chief said most of the injured are believed to be local residents, and not visitors.

“A horrific act of violence took place on Bourbon Street earlier this morning,” wrote the Louisiana governor, Jeff Landry, on X. “I urge all near the scene to avoid the area.”

As the sun began to rise over the city on New Year’s Day, law enforcement from a number of agencies had swarmed across the city’s French Quarter. Much of Bourbon Street was blocked off as police checked the area for secondary devices.

New Orleans’s government for years has been using bollards to prevent motorists from driving up Bourbon at particularly crowded times, including for major celebrations like New Year’s. But those bollards were down for repairs at the time of Wednesday morning’s attack.

At the intersection of Bourbon Street and Canal Street, usually a bustling tourist hub, dozens of city police cars lined the streets. Yellow police tape was wrapped around the main drag and three white vans from the parish coroner’s office were parked parallel, near to where the attack took place.

One resident, who did not want to give their name, had been asleep at their home nearby when the attacks began and said he awoke to “screams of terror” and shouts of “no!”

Jay McGuffey, 28, told the Guardian she had been visiting the city from Mississippi and had been in a nightclub on Bourbon Street when the incident took place.

“We were just having fun, celebrating New Year’s, and then they told us to get out cause somebody had got shot. Then we heard that a truck had been through here, and 15 people had been shot,” McGuffey said.

The witness added that she had not been allowed into her hotel because there were still bodies on the ground. “How did this happen? There are like 100 cops out here,” she said.

CBS said one of its reporters, Kati Weis, saw people on the ground with injuries. It said witnesses had told her the driver of the vehicle had fired a weapon and that police had returned fire.

CNN quoted a witness, Kevin Garcia, 22, as saying: “All I seen was a truck slamming into everyone on the left side of Bourbon sidewalk.

“A body came flying at me,” he said, adding that he had also heard gunshots.

New Orleans is preparing for the Sugar Bowl on Wednesday evening, a major college football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Notre Dame. It is also preparing to host the NFL’s Super Bowl on 9 February.

The city hosted a parade on Tuesday ahead of the Sugar Bowl, and according to CNN, the New Orleans police department had said it would be staffed “at 100%” during the festivities.

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