Khamzat Azimov: Who is the Paris attacker responsible for stabbing five people, killing one?

Chechen-born knifeman was on counter-terrorism watchlist of suspected radicals

French police are scouring the background of a Chechnya-born Frenchman who attacked passers-by with a knife in Paris.

Khamzat Azimov shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) as he began his attack, which killed a 29-year-old man and wounded four others on Saturday, before he was shot dead by police.

Isis claimed responsibility for the knife attack, which took place in the bustling Opera district, known for its many restaurants, cafes and the Palais Garnier opera.

Azimov’s parents and a friend from the eastern city of Strasbourg were detained by police for questioning.

Khamzat Azimov shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) before being shot dead by police in central Paris (AFP/Getty Images)

Since 2016, he had been on a counter-terrorism watchlist of suspected radicals who may be a threat to national security, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said.

In a video which the SITE intelligence monitoring group said was posted by Isis’s Amaq news agency, a young man described as the attacker pledged allegiance to the terror group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Speaking in French, his face largely obscured by a black hood and scarf, he said “infidels” fighting Isis were to blame.

“You started it by killing Muslims,” he said.

An image grab taken from a video released by Amaq, Isis's propaganda agency, showing Khamzat Azimov pledge allegiance to the terror group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (AFP/Getty Images)

Azimov obtained French nationality in 2010. He was born in the largely Muslim Russian republic of Chechnya, where extremism has long simmered.

Chechens have been among the numerous foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, some joining the Isis cause early in the fighting.

Mr Griveaux rejected criticism from opponents of France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, that the government was not doing enough to stem such attacks, saying: “Zero risk does not exist.”

The four people wounded in the attack were out of danger, France’s interior minister, Gerard Collomb, told reporters.

In a similar attack in October, a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before he was shot dead by soldiers.

The deadliest of the attacks to have hit France over the past three years occurred in Paris in November 2015, when 130 people were killed in coordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France and various restaurants.