The suspect in New Orleans’ devastating terror attack, which claimed the lives of ten and injured more than 30, is a Texas-born Army veteran who was carrying an ISIS flag and an improvised explosive device in his pickup truck.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was driving a rented Ford pickup truck when he crashed into a crowd of revelers around 3:15 a.m. local time, the FBI confirmed to The New York Sun.

He then got out of the vehicle and opened fire on local law enforcement, the FBI said. Police returned fire and pronounced Jabbar dead on the scene. Two police officers were hospitalized from injuries incurred during the crossfire.

“An ISIS flag was located in the vehicle and the FBI is working to determine the subject’s potential associations and affiliations with terrorist organizations,” the FBI said. 

The bureau said it found weapons and a potential improvised explosive device in the truck as well as other “potential IEDs” in the French Quarter. FBI bomb technicians and other law enforcement were determining whether any of the devices are “viable” and will defuse them, if so. 

A law enforcement source told New Orlean’s Times-Picayune that Jabbar was dressed in military gear when he slammed his vehicle into a large group of people on Canal and Bourbon Street. According to reports, Jabbar served ten years in the U.S. Army.

The Times-Picayune added that law enforcement are investigating whether a different suspect rented the truck used by Jabbar. The FBI told the Sun it is “aggressively running down all leads to identify any possible associates of the subject.” 

Expressing his condolences, President-elect Trump alleged that the assailant was in the country illegally.

“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” he said in a statement on TruthSocial.com.

“Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department,” Trump wrote, adding that his administration will “fully support” the city of New Orleans as it investigates “this act of pure evil.”

President Bidden said he has been “continually briefed since early this morning by federal law enforcement leadership and my homeland security team” and has directed his team “to ensure every resource is available as federal, state, and local law enforcement work assiduously to get to the bottom of what happened as quickly as possible and to ensure that there is no remaining threat of any kind.”

New Orleans police say the “mass casualty incident,” which New Orleans’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, was first to call a “terrorist attack,” was an “intentional” attack committed by a man who was “hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage” that followed when he plowed the white pickup truck into the crowd.

“It was very intentional behavior,” the superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, Anne Kirkpatrick, said of the crash. “This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could. This was not a DUI situation. This was more complex and more serious based on the information we have right now.”

The majority of victims appear to be locals, rather than tourists, she said. The perpetrator shot two police officers, Ms. Kirkpatrick said, who are now “stable.”

“Because of the intentional mindset of this perpetrator, who went around our barricades in order to conduct this, he was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” she said.

New Orleans’s emergency preparedness agency says the area is an “active scene” and is warning the public to stay off of Bourbon Street. 

The incident came hours before the kickoff of the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the NCAA football quarterfinal between the University of Georgia and Notre Dame, held in the city’s Caesars Superdome, with thousands expected to be in attendance. The Sugar Bowl Committee announced mid-afternoon that it was postponing the game for 24 hours.

New Orleans is also the city where Super Bowl LIX is to be played. City officials are reviewing their security plans in the wake of the attack. Governor Landry of Louisiana issued an emergency declaration Wednesday to enable federal, state, and local law enforcement “to bring all of the resources necessary to get this city safe.” He also said he mobilized a military police company to assist the New Orleans police, FBI, and Louisiana State Police.

One of the critically injured was a University of Georgia student in town to attend the game, according to the university’s president, Jere W. Morehead.