Move on Folks ... Just Another Terror Attack

 

"[The driver was] hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did."

"It was very intentional behaviour. This man was trying to run over as many people as he could."

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick

 

"When I got to work this morning, it was kind of pandemonium everywhere."

"There were a couple of bodies on the ground covered up."

"Police were looking for bombs in garbage cans."

Derick Fleming, bellhop, downtown New Orleans hotel

Zion Parsons was with two friends, leaving a restaurant on Bourbon Street, suddenly jerked aware of a 'commotion' and 'banging'. When he turned his head, it was to see a vehicle 'barrelling' onto the pavement and headed straight toward him and his companions. He managed to dodge the oncoming vehicle, but one of his friends was far less fortunate. When he saw his friend's injuries and hear gunfire, he ran away in panic.

 

Nearby, at a cafe a mere block from the terrorist attack on New Orleans's famous easy street, others celebrated the first day of 2025, awaiting their breakfast, the area crowded with others who had stayed up all night to bring in the new year, or who had meandered over to join celebrants and meld with the crowd of happy people, residents and tourists alike.

 

FBI agents work at the site where people were killed by a man driving a truck in an attack during New Year's celebrations in New Orleans on January 1.   Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

 

Such attacks, conducted by foreign terrorists infiltrating American soil, or carried through by native Americans with grievances and severe mental conditions, occur everywhere and anywhere. The likelihood of such attacks, or others struck by grievances who seek out venues that reflect their disaffection with life and opportunities withheld, at schools, at shopping centres, at public venues like Bourbon Street's celebration of the New Year, are so frequent albeit always unexpected, they have become normalized.

One such American who had dedicated himself to carnage and death on behalf of the Islamist death cult of deadly jihad killed fourteen people Wednesday morning, ramming a rented pickup truck into a crowd of revellers. Over 30 others were injured in the attack, an attack meant to kill and maim as many as conceivably possible, in the interests of the agenda of the Islamic State, a flag of which was found in the killer's possession.

 

The wrecked white pickup truck could be seen surrounded by police on Wednesday morning  Getty Images

 

Wednesday's festivities on Bourbon Street will be long remembered as a day of macabre mayhem, one the FBI is investigating as an act of terrorism. They cannot question the man identified as American-born, 42-year old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who, when police approached the scene, began shooting at the officers, inviting return fire and death as a martyr to be celebrated in Islamist quarters with the expectation that he would rise to Paradise in reward.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar FBI

He met his death in a firefight he provoked at 3:15 a.m., the area teeming with New Year's celebrants. The bearded Jabbar dressed in camouflage lay beside the truck sprawled in death face to the road. A handgun and AR-type rifle were recovered by investigators, while an improvised explosive device was discovered along with other potential explosive devices in the vehicle and elsewhere in the French Quarter.

The barriers routinely put in place along Bourbon Street for such celebratory events as New Year's to prevent vehicle attacks were not in place this year. An ongoing major project to remove and replace the bollards left the area vulnerable to the potential for an attack of this magnitude. Plans were that the work was to have been completed for the Super Bowl on February 9. Following the attack coroner's office vans parked at Bourbon and Canal were cordoned off by police tape. Crowds of tourists were left to navigate their luggage through a labyrinth of blockades.

"I yell her name, and I turn my head, and her leg is twisted and contorted above and around her back. And there was just blood."

"As you're walking down the street, you can just look and see bodies, just bodies of people, just bleeding, broken bones."

"I just ran until I couldn't hear nothing no more."

Zion Parsons, 18, New Orleans resident-student