New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is calling the New Year’s Day mass casualty incident that killed 10 people and injured 30 a “terrorist attack.”
The FBI is investigating what occurred early Wednesday, when a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans’ famed Canal and Bourbon Street in the first hours of New Year’s Day.
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 at the scene.
New Orleans police earlier said they were responding to a mass casualty incident, including fatalities. The NOLA Ready website that it occurred around 3:15 a.m. Central Time.
Officials said the injured had been taken to five local hospitals.
Historic Bourbon Street is in the French Quarter, a popular tourist area of bars and restaurants.
The incident came toward the end of New Year’s celebrations in New Orleans and hours before the kickoff of the AllState Bowl, a college football quarterfinal held in the city’s Caesars Superdome, with thousands expected to be in attendance.
