Here’s what you need to know about today’s attack
Our live coverage has ended. Here are the key points.
What happened: A rented Home Depot truck, driven by a 29-year-old man, plowed into pedestrians on Manhattan’s West Side Highway bike path, near the World Trade Center, in what authorities called a terror attack.
The victims: Eight people were killed. At least 11 others were injured.
The suspect: Two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation identified the suspect as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. He is from
Uzbekistan and came to the United States in 2010, sources said. A note found in the truck claimed the attack was for ISIS, a source said.
Trump orders DHS to “step up” extreme vetting
President Trump tweeted this evening that he has asked the Department of Homeland Security to “step up our already Extreme Vetting Program,” a screening policy he first introduced on the campaign trail that would attempt to establish whether applicants’ beliefs match US values on gay rights, gender equality and religious freedoms, among others.
What is extreme vetting?
Trump famously campaigned on a pledge to indefinitely ban Muslims from entering the United States, something his campaign aides later tried to finesse as a broader policy aimed at implementing “extreme vetting” for immigrants from certain countries.
He has since ordered travel bans on a handful of Muslim-majority countries — Uzbekistan not being one of them — though US courts have repeatedly blocked them from going into effect.
