Paris: An assailant shouting "Allah Akbar" killed a passer-by in a knife attack that also wounded four others in the heart of Paris late on Saturday before he was shot dead by police, French authorities said.

French prosecutor Francois Molins said the police's anti-terrorism unit would launch an investigation, given the aggressor's "mode of operation".

"At this stage, based on the one hand on the account of witnesses who said the attacker cried 'Allahu akbar' [God is great in Arabic] while attacking passersby with a knife, and given the modus operandi, we have turned this over to the counter-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office," Molins said at the scene.

The Islamic State group's Aamaq news agency said in a statement early on Sunday that the assailant carried out the attack in response to the group's calls for supporters to target members of the US-led military coalition squeezing the extremists out of Iraq and Syria.