Paris - French investigators identified Sunday the knifeman who killed one person and wounded four others in a suspected terror attack that brought panic once more to the streets of Paris.
The knifeman identified was born in Chechnya in 1997, a judicial source said, and his parents have been taken into custody.
A source with knowledge of the case told AFP he was a young man with brown hair and a beard who was dressed in black tracksuit trousers.
The assailant shouting "Allahu akbar" was shot dead by police in central Paris late Saturday, minutes after he attacked people near the city's main opera house - an area full of bars, restaurants and theatres which were brimming on a weekend night.
Witnesses described scenes of panic as Parisians realised another potential terror attack was underway in a country already reeling from a string of jihadist assaults in the last three years that have killed more than 245 people.
"I was taking orders and I saw a young woman trying to get into the restaurant in panic," Jonathan, a waiter at a Korean restaurant, told AFP. The woman was bleeding and the attacker appeared behind her. He said a young man tried to fend off the assailant who then fled.
"The attacker entered a shopping street, I saw him with a knife in his hand," he said. "He looked crazy."
Milan, 19, said he saw "several people in distress" including a woman with wounds to her neck and leg.
"Firemen were giving her first aid. I heard two, three shots and a policeman told me that the man had been overpowered."
In a tweet French President Emmanuel Macron said: "France once again pays the price of blood."
Authorities cited witnesses as saying the man shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) as he went on the rampage, killing a 29-year-old man, adding that a terror investigation had been launched.
Two of those wounded were rushed to hospital in a serious condition but Interior Minister Gerard Collomb later told reporters all the victims were out of danger and would survive their injuries.
"I have just seen the person who was most seriously injured, she is better, she is saved," he said.
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said police were on the scene "within five minutes" of the attack and that some nine minutes later the assailant was dead, he added.
"The speed of the response obviously avoided a heavier toll," he said.
A police source told AFP one officer tried to restrain the attacker with a taser but when that failed a colleague shot the man dead.
