The situation unfolding in New Orleans following the Bourbon Street attack on New Year’s Eve is becoming increasingly intricate with each passing hour. Recent updates from the troubled city reveal a concerning development: bomb-making materials were discovered during a response to a small house fire by the New Orleans Fire Department.
Authorities are looking into a potential link between the bomb-making materials found at a New Orleans Airbnb property and the horrific truck-ramming terror incident that resulted in the death of at least 15 individuals and left over 30 others wounded on Bourbon Street during the New Year’s festivities.
The unsettling sequence of events began when a minor fire broke out at an Airbnb location in the 1300 block of Mandeville Street, situated in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans, early Wednesday morning around 5:30 a.m.
The New Orleans Fire Department evacuated dozens of people from nearby homes and contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, FOX 8 reported.
The exact nature of those materials has not yet been released. Laptop computers and cellular phones recovered from the property are said to be linked to the Bourbon Street terrorist attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar. Fox News’ report, linked above, continued:
The FBI confirmed at a news conference Thursday that FBI and ATF agents have secured that house on Mandeville Street and “that location is being searched for potential evidence.” Two laptops were recovered from that address, the FBI said, and an additional three cell phones linked to the now-deceased suspect, , were being analyzed by investigators.
At Thursday’s news conference, ATF said that the Mandeville address is still being processed and the ATF national response team – comprised of certified fire investigators, explosives specialists, fire engineers and electrical engineers – were still working additional leads to help identify how the fire started the morning the attack unfolded across town on Bourbon Street.
If in fact this house and these materials are linked to Jabbar, then this might speak to a level of planning that’s beyond most criminal mass attacks. This is preparation that must have taken weeks, if not months.
