PARIS — The knife-wielding man who briefly spread terror in Paris Saturday night was born in Chechnya and was on a list of potential terrorism suspects, leading critics of France’s antiterrorism policy to again call for a crackdown on those on the list.

The man, Khamzat Azimov, 20, a French citizen, stabbed five passers-by, one fatally. Bloodied by the attacks, he confronted three police officers near the main Paris opera house, witnesses said, and was gunned down after police apparently failed to stop him with a stun gun.

A day later, the Islamic State’s news agency, Amaq, released cellphone video of the attacker pledging allegiance to the terrorist group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and issuing a call to fellow ISIS supporters elsewhere to attack.

Saturday’s rampage lasted less than 20 minutes.

A French judicial official said the victim who died was a 29-year-old man. None of the injuries suffered by the four wounded people were considered life-threatening.

The suspect had been on the terrorism watch list since 2016, according to news reports, because of his contacts with a man whose wife had attempted to go to Syria.

There are about 20,000 names on the watch list. Successive governments have said that the list is merely a tool to help keep loose track of those in danger of turning to terrorism.

New York Times