A US ARMY veteran who drove a pick-up truck into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, killing 15 people, had posted videos on social media hours before saying he was inspired by the Islamic State (Isis).

The FBI said it was investigating Wednesday’s attack, in which the driver steered around a police blockade and slammed into revellers before being shot dead by police, as a terrorist act and did not believe he acted alone.

Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle, which bore the Isis flag, along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the city’s French Quarter.

The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre scene of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants.

Zion Parsons, 18, said he saw the attacker’s vehicle “barrelling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air.”

“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” said Mr Pardons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among those killed.

The FBI identified the driver as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a US citizen from Texas, and said it was working to determine any potential associations with terrorist organisations.

“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible,” FBI assistant special agent Alethea Duncan told a news conference.

Mr Jabbar joined the US Army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said.

He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020.