New Orleans car ramming attack: key details and updates

A pickup truck drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans during New Year’s celebrations, resulting in a tragic loss of life and injuries.

What we know:

🔸 Casualties: Ten people have been confirmed dead and at least 35 others hospitalized with injuries, according to an official statement from the City of New Orleans.

🔸 The incident: A white pickup truck ploughed into revellers on Bourbon Street at high speed, eyewitnesses told CBS News.

🔸 Police statement: The suspect bypassed barricades designed to stop vehicle access to Bourbon Street in what was described as “very intentional behavior” by New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, who noted that the driver appeared to be “trying to run over as many people as he could.”

🔸 Gunfire exchange: After ramming the crowd, the driver began firing a weapon from inside the vehicle. Police returned fire.

🔸 Injured officers: Two police officers were wounded in the firefight, but are in a stable condition, Kirkpatrick said.

🔸 Suspect's status: The driver was shot and killed by police, ABC News reported, citing authorities.

🔸 Explosives found: The FBI reported finding improvised explosive devices at the scene, though it remains unclear if they were connected to the attack, a bureau spokesperson told Fox News.

Reactions from officials:

🔹 Mayoress LaToya Cantrell called the attack a likely “terrorist act.”

🔹 Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry condemned the “horrific act of violence.”

The incident is under active investigation, with local, state and federal authorities working to uncover the driver’s motive and circumstances.

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❗️The FBI has confirmed the death of the suspect who drove a car into pedestrians in New Orleans, killing 10. The Bureau is classifying the event as a terrorist attack.

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📹 New graphic footage has emerged from the scene of the New Orleans terror attack.

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⚓️ Waterway war: Never-ending struggle for world’s strategic straits and canals PART 1 👉 PART 2

Major straits and canals have landed back in the news in recent weeks and months. What are the competing claims to the maritime arteries of global trade through history?

📍 Suez Canal

Built in the 1860s during the European imperialist conquest of wide swathes of Africa and Asia, the Suez Canal would go on to play a key role in the global conflicts of the centuries that followed:

🔸 Ottoman forces tried to seize the Suez in 1915 and 1916 during WWI, looking to cut the Entente off from its speediest maritime route to Asia.

🔸 In 1942 during WWII, Rommel’s Africa Corps approached to within 350 km of the canal before being driven back. Had the canal been captured, Allied naval operations in the Mediterranean would have been severely hampered, and Axis forces could drive on to the oil fields of the Middle East.

🔸 In 1956 during the early years of the Cold War, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal triggered an invasion by France and the UK, seeking to return colonial control, and by Israel, incensed by Nasser’s anti-Zionist stance.

🔸 Fast forward to today, and the Suez has become a victim of the Israel-Houthi conflict, with Egypt losing $7 billion in transit revenues in 2024 alone.

📍 Panama Canal

🔹 Panama was part of Colombia until 1903, when pro-independence forces (conveniently) backed by US warships declared independence. “I made Panama,” President Teddy Roosevelt would later boast. Construction of the modern-day Panama Canal began shortly after in 1904.

🔹 In 1989, the US invaded Panama to oust erstwhile ally Manuel Noriega. Officially, the invasion was about “defending democracy” and fighting drug trafficking. In reality, Washington feared Noriega might scrap provisions to a treaty ensuring permanent US military presence in the region.

🔹 35 years later, President-Elect Trump has threatened to seize the Canal.

👉 PART 2

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⚓️ Waterway war: Never-ending struggle for world’s strategic straits and canals PART 2 👉 PART 1

📍 Hormuz Strait

Situated at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and accounting for the shipment of a quarter of the world’s oil consumption, the Hormuz Strait has proven the key maritime chokepoint of the industrial age – something undoubtedly foreseen by Britain when it subjugated the Arab states adjacent to the Strait in 1820.

🔶 The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 showed just how important the Hormuz Strait is, with Saddam Hussein trying to provoke Tehran into closing the strait to trigger a full-scale US intervention.

🔶 Today, Iran says its military strategy may include closing the Strait in the event of major US or Israeli aggression.

📍 Turkish Straits

🔸 From the imperial age through the Cold War and into the present, the Turkish Straits have been a key prize in the competition for access between the Black and the Mediterranean seas.

🔸 Under the 1916 Constantinople Agreement, Britain and France vowed to transfer Constantinople (Istanbul) and the Straits to the Russian Empire if the Entente won the war. The promises were quickly forgotten after the Russian Revolution.

🔸 After WWII, the USSR proposed joint military control over the Straits, mirroring US control of the Panama Canal and Britain's over the Suez. Soviet concerns stemmed from the passage of Axis warships through the Strait during the war, Ankara’s welcoming of a US battleship in Istanbul in 1946, and Turkiye’s entry into NATO in 1952.

🔸 Today, the Turkish Straits remain a key node for global trade – especially grain shipments from Russia and Ukraine.

📍 Malacca Strait

🔹 The importance of this shipping lane became clear in the 1500s, when the Portuguese conquered it from the Aceh Sultanate. In the 1640s, Portuguese control was replaced by Dutch, who maintained a grip on the strait until WWII.

🔹 During the war, the Japanese invasion and occupation of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies gave Tokyo total control of the Malacca Strait.

🔹 Fast forward to today, and US threats to close the strategic strait to China and its Middle East oil sources have prompted Beijing to search for backup routes, such as Myanmar.

👉 PART 1

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