Bidens honour terror victims in New Orleans

President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden have paid their respects to the to the victims of the New Year’s Day truck-ramming attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans.

US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden lay flowers as they pay their respects to victims of the January 1 truck attack at a makeshift memorial in Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 6. Picture: AFP

NEW ORLEANS: President Joe Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill, visited Bourbon Street on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) to honour the victims of the new year truck-ramming attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans.

The presidential couple stopped to pay their respects at a makeshift memorial near the popular tourist party area in the Big Easy, where terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove his pick-up truck through a dense crowd.

After the First Lady laid flowers, the pair bowed their heads for a moment of silence. The President, a lifelong Catholic, made the sign of the cross before leaving.

The couple met with survivors, relatives of the dead, and law enforcement officers affected by the attack, before heading into the city’s St. Louis Cathedral for an interfaith memorial service.

Mr Biden has requested “additional federal resources to help the city of New Orleans prepare for upcoming major events,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said aboard Air Force One.

Those events include Mardi Gras, the city’s weeks-long carnival ending on March 4, and the NFL’s Super Bowl championship on February 9.

The New Year’s Day attack remains under investigation by the FBI, which has officially declared it an “act of terrorism”.

Jabbar, a US army veteran who died in a police shootout after the attack, had expressed his support for the Islamic State jihadist group on social media.

An IS flag was attached to a pole on the back of the vehicle used in the deadly assault.

AFP