.png)
2 days ago
4
The deadly attack on new year revellers in New Orleans, which killed at least 15 people and injured dozens more, was all the more terrible for its familiar characteristics. The method of attack – ploughing a vehicle into crowds – and the decision to strike those celebrating at a time associated with togetherness and joy are now far too well recognised internationally. It is less than a fortnight since a man used a car to kill at least five, including a nine-year-old child, at a Christmas market near Magdeburg in Germany.
Part of the grimness of this event is that ordinary activities that should require no special protections are now guarded as a matter of course – and that even such precautions can prove inadequate. Bollards were reportedly being upgraded in New Orleans ahead of next month’s Super Bowl, and patrols and barricades were being used in the meantime. In Magdeburg, the perpetrator used an entrance for emergency vehicles.
The FBI has said that the New Orleans attack was a terrorist act and that it now believes the assailant, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, acted alone. An Islamic State flag was found in the truck he used, and he recorded videos proclaiming his allegiance to IS. While several perpetrators of vehicle-ramming attacks have allied themselves with IS, others have had varying motives; the Magdeburg driver had spread anti-Islamic propaganda.
Analysts had warned of a heightened IS threat to the west in the holiday season, and the Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 threat assessment, released in October, warned that the risk of terrorism was expected to remain high, with lone offenders and small groups most likely to carry out attacks with little or no warning. It also noted that most mass casualty attacks were related to mental illness or relationship grievances rather than ideology. Authorities say that in Jabbar’s videos, he described originally intending to harm family and friends, before deciding that that wouldn’t have illustrated the “war between the believers and the disbelievers”.
The army veteran, who had served in Afghanistan, was shot dead by police as he fired from the truck. He had also placed two explosive devices nearby. Authorities are examining any potential connection with the explosion of a Tesla truck packed with fireworks and gas canisters outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas on the same day, but by Thursday had found “no definitive link”. The driver of that vehicle, who was killed in the blast, was reportedly an off-duty special forces operations sergeant.
Yet the uncertainties surrounding the New Orleans attack have done nothing to temper the incoming president’s response. While Joe Biden’s remarks focused on the need for a full and assiduous investigation, and the prevention of any further threat, Donald Trump – who takes office on 20 January – seized the opportunity to fearmonger and point-score. He called the US a laughing stock, appeared to blame law enforcement and tried to link the attack to immigration even after it emerged that Jabbar was a US citizen born in Texas.
Mr Trump has directly espoused and amplified Islamophobic and anti-migrant rhetoric, and has vowed to expand his first-term “Muslim ban” on migration. His choice of personnel, as well as his authoritarian tendencies, increase concerns about how his administration may respond to this and similar attacks. Reliable information and a determined, reasoned response from their president, rather than a hysterical, inaccurate and xenophobic reaction, are the best way to keep Americans safe.
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
