PARIS — The knife-wielding man who briefly spread terror in the heart of Paris on Saturday night was born in Chechnya and was on a list of potential terrorism suspects, leading critics of the French government’s antiterrorism policy to again call on Sunday for a crackdown on those on the list. The man, identified by the police and the French news media as Khamzat Azimov, 20, a French citizen, stabbed five passers-by, one fatally, in the middle of a neighborhood crowded with restaurants and bars, the authorities said. His hands and face bloodied from the attacks, he confronted three police officers in a narrow street near the main Paris Opera house, the Rue Monsigny, witnesses said, and was quickly gunned down after the police apparently failed to stop him with a stun gun. A day after the fatal stabbing, the Islamic State’s news agency, Amaq, released a cellphone video of the attacker pledging allegiance to the terrorist group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and issuing a call to fellow Islamic State supporters in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere to carry out attacks.

Source: New York Times May 13, 2018 18:45 UTC