'This attack left me heartbroken for New Orleans'

"Nowhere deserves this - this city and these people do not deserve this."

Steve Hyde, from Birmingham, was supposed to be celebrating his 44th birthday in New Orleans on Wednesday but that soon changed when he heard gunshots outside the club he was in.

"We heard shots and saw people running past the window but we didn't really know what was going on," he said.

From his hotel in the American state, Mr Hyde told the BBC how the joyous atmosphere in the city's famous party district quickly turned to one of panic and horror on the night of the New Orleans attack which saw 15 people killed.

He said: "The shutters came down in the bar and we were just standing around and thinking, 'what do we do?'."

At least 35 people were injured after Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an Army veteran from Texas, drove into large crowds in the early hours of New Year's Day, said authorities.

A flag associated with the Islamic State group was found in the vehicle he was driving and the FBI said it was investigating what affiliations Jabbar may have had with terrorist groups.

Mr Hyde soon left the bar for his hotel where he began to search the internet to find out what had happened.

"I saw one post from someone saying, 'there's a truck that's ploughed up Bourbon Street' but I thought 'that can't be right'," he said.

"I didn't really know what was going on. We knew it wasn't going to be good but we kind of thought, 'OK, it's a shooting, you know, someone has been shot'.

"Obviously that was not the case, they shut [the bar] down, the windows, locked the door."

President Joe Biden said Jabbar, who drove the pick-up truck at high speed in the heart of New Orleans' French Quarter, had a "desire to kill".

Mr Hyde said he tried to sleep that night and had hoped the situation would become clearer in the morning.

The 44-year-old woke up to calls from loved ones, panicked to see if he was alive.

"My family were all checking to see if I was all right," he added.

Mr Hyde said the local community was shaken: "I am heartbroken. I love the city and I love the people.

"It's going to take a long time for people to come to terms with what's actually happened.

"The people of New Orleans are really resilient, this is obviously not standard for them.

"They've been through hurricanes and tornadoes."

Investigators said they believed the suspect was not "solely responsible" for the attack.

The identities of the victims are still being established but they include a former Princeton University football star, Martin "Tiger" Bech.

Law enforcement were also looking at whether the attack was linked to the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas hours later - but President Biden said no link between the two incidents had been identified yet.

Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.