What is Islamic State group, what attacks has it inspired?

The FBI says it recovered the black banner of the Islamic State group from the truck that an American man from Texas smashed into New Year's partygoers in New Orleans' French Quarter, killing 15 people.

The investigation is expected to look in part at any support or inspiration that driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar may have drawn from that violent Middle East-based group or from any of at least 19 affiliated groups around the world.

President Joe Biden said on Wednesday evening that the FBI had told him that “mere hours before the attack, (Jabbar) posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired” by IS.

Routed from its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq by a US military-led coalition more than five years ago, IS has focused on seizing territory in the Middle East more than on staging massive al-Qaida-style attacks on the West.

But in its home territory, IS has welcomed any chance to behead Americans and other foreigners who come within its reach. The main group at peak strength claimed a handful of coordinated operations targeting the West, including a 2015 Paris plot that killed 130 people.

It has had success, although abated in recent years, in inspiring people around the world who are drawn to its ideology to carry out ghastly attacks on innocent civilians.

Here's a look at IS, its current status, and some of the offshoot armed groups and so-called lone wolves that have killed under the group's flag.

What is the Islamic State group?

The main group also goes by IS, ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

It began as a breakaway group from al-Qaida.

Under leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, IS had seized stunning amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria by 2014. Within territory under its control, it killed, raped and otherwise abused members of other faiths and targeted fellow Sunni Muslims who strayed from its harsh interpretation of Islam.

By 2019, a US-led military intervention had driven IS from the cities and towns of its self-claimed state. Al-Baghdadi killed himself, and two children near him, that same year, detonating an explosive vest as US forces closed in on him.

Currently, the main IS is a scattered and much weakened organization working to regain fighting strength and territory in Syria and Iraq. Experts warn that the group is reconstituting itself there.

And that flag? Typically, it's a black banner with white Arabic letters expressing a central tenet of the Islamic faith. Countless Muslims around the world see the coercive violence of the group as a perversion of their religion.

What's the influence of IS today?

Some experts argue that IS is powerful today partly as a brand, inspiring both militant groups and individuals in attacks that the group itself may have no real role in.

The group's credo and military successes have led armed extremist organisations in Africa, Asia and Europe to swear allegiance to it. It's a greatly decentralised alliance.

Many of the offshoot groups have carried out lethal attacks. Islamic State-Khorasan, an Afghanistan-based group, is one of the most lethal currently.

Attacks linked to that affiliate include the March 2024 killings of about 130 people at a Moscow theater, the August 2021 bombing that killed 13 US service members and about 170 Afghans as the US was withdrawing from Afghanistan, and killings in Pakistan and elsewhere.

What's the group's track record for inspiring attacks in the United States?

The New Orleans rampage reflects the deadliest IS-inspired attack on US soil in several years.

Other attacks over the past decade include a 2014 shooting rampage by a husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and a 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by a gunman who fatally shot 49 people, pledged his allegiance on a 911 call to al-Baghdadi and raged against the “filthy ways of the West”.

Those attacks coincided with an influx of thousands of Westerners — some of them Americans — who travelled to Syria in hopes of joining the so-called caliphate.

In the aftermath of those killings, the threat from radicalized followers of the group had appeared to wane in the Defence Department strikes have taken out other IS members and the FBI has had significant success in disrupting plots before they come to fruition.

But over the past year, FBI officials have warned about a significantly elevated threat of international terrorism following Hamas' rampage in Israel in October 2023 and the resulting Israeli strikes in Gaza.

The SITE intelligence group reported IS supporters celebrating in online chat groups on Wednesday.

“If it's a brother, he's a legend. Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” it quoted one as saying.

-AP