A driver in a pickup truck who officials said was “hell-bent on carnage” sped through a crowd of pedestrians in New Orleans’ bustling French Quarter district, killing 10 and injuring 30 in an act being investigated as a New Year’s Day terrorist attack. The FBI said the driver of the vehicle was dead. He has been preliminary identified as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar, three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told NBC News. Officials are still working on information about his background and on potential travel history, sources said. The attack occurred around 3:15 a.m. Wednesday along Bourbon Street, with crowds in the city ballooning in anticipation for tonight’s Sugar Bowl — a college football quarterfinal contest that will be played as scheduled. “He was hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” said Police Commissioner Anne Kirkpatrick. She said police officers would work to ensure safety at the Sugar Bowl, indicating that the college game would go on as scheduled. “It was very intentional behavior. This man was trying to run over as many people as he could,” Kirkpatrick said. The driver was killed in a firefight with police following the attack, the FBI said. After the vehicle came to a stop, the driver emerged from the truck and opened fire on responding officers, New Orleans police said. Officers returned fire, striking and killing the driver, police said. The FBI said in a statement that it was heading an investigation “with our partners to investigate this as an act of terrorism.” At a news conference, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described the killings at Bourbon and Canal streets as a “terrorist attack.” Kickoff at the Sugar Bowl is set for 7:45 p.m. local time at the nearby Superdome, in a game between Georgia and Notre Dame as part of the newly-expanded College Football Playoff. Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said officials were investigating the discovery of at least one suspected improvised explosive device at the scene. A man who witnessed the carnage on Bourbon Street described a harrowing scene, with bodies left “horribly disfigured” lying on the street. “It was unbelievable,” Jimmy Cothran told NBC News in a phone interview this morning as he described scenes that could only be compared to “a movie.” Cothran said he was walking from Bourbon Street toward Canal Street when he noticed a “lot of commotion” and ducked off into a nightclub. Suddenly, he said, a group of women ran inside, pushing back security and hiding under tables. “We live here and unfortunately, our first thoughts were somebody’s shooting or chasing them,” he said. Cothran said he ran upstairs, knowing the club had a balcony, only to witness a horrific scene, with the bodies of victims laying on the ground. “Two looked to be at least alive. I wouldn’t say survivable but at least alive,” he said. Others appeared to be “graphically deceased,” with one having tire tracks visible on his body. “It just kept going,” he said. “Like, every eye shot, body, body, body, body.” A woman who said she was “coming through the intersection” said everything happened “so quickly.” “The guy in the pickup truck just punched the gas and mowed over the barricade and hit a petty cab passenger,” she told NBC News as her voice began to catch with emotion. “And there were just bodies and the screams. I mean, you can’t un-think about, you know, un-hear that. It was chaos.” Investigators are tryiing to determine if the suspect was firing it into the crowd with a rifle while running people over, three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation told NBC News. The vehicle has a Texas license plate, which the investigators hope will provide more information on the suspect and what unfolded. A white stick or pipe with a black cloth wrapped around it was found on the rear of the vehicle affixed to the hitch, the senior law enforcement officials told NBC News. NOLA Ready, the city’s emergency preparedness department, said the injured had been taken to five local hospitals. President Joe Biden lauded New Orleans law enforcement for its “brave and swift” action to prevent “even greater death and injury.” He vowed full support to investigate what he called an “horrific incident.” “I have directed my 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,” the president wrote in a statement. President-elect Donald Trump said his administration would “fully support” the city of New Orleans in its investigation of the attack. “Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department,” Trump said. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry called the incident a “horrific act of violence” in a post on X and said he was praying for the victims. Officials said earlier that they expected the city to be busy as locals and visitors rang in the new year. New Orleans Police Department said it would be staffed at 100% and would draft in another 300 officers to help keep the peace. The attack is the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence, a trend that has alarmed law enforcement officials and that can be difficult to protect against. A 50-year-old Saudi doctor plowed into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg last month, killing four women and a 9-year-old boy. A man who drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee in 2021 is serving a life sentence after a judge rejected arguments from him and his family that mental illness drove him to do it. Six people were killed. An Islamic extremist was sentenced last year to 10 life sentences for killing eight people with a truck on a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween in 2017. Also in 2017, a self-proclaimed admirer of Adolf Hitler slammed his car into counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and is now serving a life sentence.