The suspected terrorist who stabbed a man to death and injured four other people with a knife in central Paris on Saturday evening was a Chechen-born French citizen on a terror watchlist.

Named on Sunday as Khamzat Azimov, 20, he was questioned by counter-terrorism police last year over his links with Islamist radicals including a woman arrested in Hungary suspected of planning to join jihadists in Syria.

French intelligence identified him using facial recognition software. Born in Russia’s Chechen Republic, Azimov became French in 2010 when his mother was naturalised after being granted asylum.

Police shot him dead in Rue Monsigny, near the Palais Garnier opera house, only nine minutes after they received the first emergency call at 8.47pm on Saturday. He shouted ‘Allahu Akhbar’ (Arabic for God is greatest) as he slashed at bystanders' throats. Dozens ran, shouting warnings to others as they fled.

Oliver Woodhead, a Londoner who owns L’Entente, a brasserie serving British food just yards from the spot where the killer was shot, told the Daily Telegraph: “It could have been a lot worse if the police hadn’t got here so quickly, or if the weather had been warmer and more people had been sitting outside on café terraces where they would have been vulnerable. I think the attacker deliberately targeted people who looked like tourists to hurt the tourist industry, which is vital for France’s economy.”