US agencies worry New Orleans truck attack may inspire copycats

WASHINGTON: US law enforcement and intelligence agencies are concerned about copycat vehicle-ramming attacks following the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans by a US Army veteran, according to a US law enforcement intelligence bulletin published on Friday.

The bulletin was issued a day after the FBI said Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native, was “100 percent inspired” by the Islamic State militant group to drive a truck into New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens of others.

Jabbar, who flew an Islamic State flag from the rear of the truck he had rented, subsequently was killed in a shootout with police.

The FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the US National Counterterrorism Centre “are concerned about possible copycat or retaliatory attacks,” said the intelligence bulletin published by the three agencies and reviewed by Reuters.

Such attacks “are likely to remain attractive for aspiring attackers given vehicles’ ease of acquisition and the low skill threshold necessary to conduct an attack,” said the bulletin issued to US law enforcement agencies.

The bulletin noted that as of Thursday, Islamic State had not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack. But the group’s online supporters celebrated it and a Dec 20 vehicle-ramming in Germany even though that incident did not appear to have been Islamic State-inspired, it said.

Other online users have cited those attacks to make “general calls for violence against specific groups, such as immigrants or Muslims,” the bulletin continued.

Islamic State has continued promoting its propaganda and recruiting adherents online despite suffering serious losses to a US-led military coalition that recaptured the “caliphate” the militants overran in Syria and Iraq in 2014.