RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to US President Joe Biden on Friday for the victims of the terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day.
“As we condemn this shameful act, we express to Your Excellency, to the families of the deceased and to the friendly people of the United States of America our deepest condolences and sincere sympathy, wishing the injured a speedy recovery,” King Salman said in a cable, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Crown Prince Mohammed, who is also the Kingdom’s prime minister, sent a similar cable to President Biden.
Fourteen people were killed and dozens were injured in a pickup truck rampage by US Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar in the southern city of New Orleans on Jan. 1, in what the FBI said was an act of terrorism inspired by the Daesh group. He was later killed in a shootout with police.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said on Thursday that videos made by Jabbar just before the attack showed that the 42-year-old Texas native supported Daesh, claimed to have joined the militant group before last summer and believed in a “war between the believers and nonbelievers.”
The FBI, however, clarified that Jabbar acted alone.
Jabbar’s rampage happened on the same day Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty member of the US Army Special Forces, drove a Tesla Cybertruck packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters and exploded it outside the entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, injuring seven people.
Investigators on Friday said that Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a “wake-up call” and that the country was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”
– with AP
