What is the Islamic State? Terror group flag seen at New Orleans attack

The suspect, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was flying an Islamic State flag during the assault

A black flag with white lettering lies on the ground rolled up behind a pickup truck that a man drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing and injuring a number of people, early Wednesday morning, Jan. 1, 2025 (AP)

The radical Islamic State group, which once imposed a reign of terror over millions of people in Syria and Iraq, has been implicated in the New Orleans truck attack.

A total of 15 people have been killed in the New Year’s Day attack.

Officials have not yet released the names of the 15 people killed in the New Orleans New Year’s Day truck attack, but their families and friends have started sharing their stories. New Orleans Coroner Dr. Dwight McKenna said in a statement late Wednesday that they will release the names of the dead once autopsies are complete and they’ve talked with the next of kin. At least 35 people were injured.

The suspect, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas who once served in Afghanistan, was flying an Islamic State flag during the assault.

U.S. President Joe Biden said that the FBI reported to him that Jabbar had posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by Islamic State.

Latest updates

• In New Orleans, a truck attack on New Year’s Day killed 15 people and injured dozens on Bourbon Street
• The suspect, identified as 42-year-old U.S. citizen and Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was shot and killed by police. President Biden stated that Jabbar was “inspired by ISIS,” based on videos released before the attack.
• The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of terrorism. Jabbar, a Texas resident, reportedly drove a rented Ford pickup truck with an ISIS flag and an improvised explosive device. Additional explosive devices were found in the French Quarter.
• The Sugar Bowl was postponed by a day due to the attack. Former First Lady Melania Trump called for an end to the “brutality,” while former President Trump’s comments linking the attack to immigration were countered by the confirmation of the suspect’s U.S. citizenship.
• Follow out live updates.

Following are facts about the movement, considered by analysts to be more violent and extremist than al Qaeda.

The Islamic State group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for an attack on a military base in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland a day earlier, the group posted on its Telegram channel.

In its statement, Islamic State said the attack was conducted by 12 militants and two booby-trapped vehicles, adding that it killed more than 20 military personnel from the Puntland forces and injured dozens of others.

Though largely crushed by a U.S.-led coalition several years ago, IS has managed some major attacks while seeking to rebuild.

They include an assault on a Russian concert hall in March 2024, killing at least 143 people, and two explosions that killed nearly 100 people in the Iranian city of Kerman in January.

It also claimed responsibility for an assault by suicide attackers on a mosque in Oman last year, killing at least nine people.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to re-establish capabilities in Syria after the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad but said that the United States is determined not to let that happen.

Aside from its bloody operations in the Middle East, Islamic State has also inspired lone wolf attacks in the West.

In August 2024 authorities said that a 19-year-old Austrian suspected of masterminding a planned attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna had vowed allegiance to the leader of Islamic State.

Police investigators surround a white truck that has been crashed into a work lift in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 1, 2025. (AFP via Getty Images)

At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the IS “caliphate” held sway over a wide area of Syria and Iraq, imposing death and torture on opponents of its radical brand of Islam. Its fighters repeatedly defeated both countries’ armies and carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world.

Its then leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by U.S. special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.

The caliphate collapsed in Iraq, where it once had a base only a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria after a sustained military campaign by a U.S.-led coalition.

The new leader, known by the pseudonym Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, remains shrouded in secrecy.

Matthias Hauswirth of New Orleans prays on the street near the scene where a vehicle drove into a crowd (AP)

IS has switched tactics since the collapse of its forces and a string of other setbacks in the Middle East.

Once based in the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, from where it sought to rule like a centralised government, the group took refuge in the hinterlands of the two fractured countries.

Its fighters are scattered in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in IS heartlands.

The movement went underground with sleeper cells that launch hit-and-run attacks, according to an Iraqi government security adviser who helps to track IS.

Some foreign fighters fled Iraq for countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan. Most have joined Islamic State’s Khorasan branch (ISIS-K), named after an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.

It is active along Iran’s borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sanaullah Ghafari, the 29-year-old leader of the Afghan branch of IS, has overseen its transformation into one of the most fearsome branches of the global Islamist network, capable of operations far from its bases in Afghanistan’s borderlands.

Africa

Islamic State - often called ISIS, ISIL or the pejorative Daesh - has also made its mark in parts of Africa.

In Uganda, militants from the IS-connected Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) staged a series of attacks including a massacre at a boarding school, the murder of a honeymooning couple and a village raid that killed at least three people.

The group, which started as an uprising in Uganda, has largely moved operations to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has staged multiple attacks.

Several other groups have pledged allegiance to IS in West Africa and across the Sahel. Affiliates have control of large areas of rural Mali, Niger, northern Burkina Faso and into North Africa.

In January 2023 the U.S. military carried out an operation that killed a senior IS leader in northern Somalia. The U.N. fears militant groups could exploit the political instability in Sudan, which is gripped by a civil war.

Edward Bruski hugs New Orleans Police Officer Zachary Stevenson on Canal street, near the French Quarter (REUTERS)

The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center has said that the threat posed by IS and militant group al Qaeda “is at a low point with the suppression of the most dangerous elements”.

But it went on to warn that half of IS’s branches are now active in insurgencies across Africa and “may be poised for further expansion”.

It said the group had lost three overall leaders and at least 13 other senior operatives in Iraq and Syria since early 2022 “contributing to a loss of expertise and a decline in ISIS attacks in the Middle East”.