French Outrage After Trump Mimics Gunmen

US President Donald Trump has outraged French opinion by suggesting the 2015 attacks on Paris could have been stopped by giving people guns.

He mimicked gunmen summoning and shooting victims one by one, saying "Boom! Come over here!" and using his hand to imitate a gun being fired.

In reality, the attackers sprayed many of their 130 victims with semi-automatic fire and set off bomb belts.

The French foreign ministry called for the victims' memory to be respected.


"France expresses its firm disapproval of the comments by President Trump about the attacks of 13 November 2015 in Paris and asks for the memory of the victims to be respected," the foreign ministry said.

François Hollande, who was French president at the time of the attacks, said Mr Trump's remarks were "shameful". They "said a lot about what he thinks of France and its values", he added.

Manuel Valls, who was France's prime minister in 2015, tweeted: "Indecent and incompetent. What more can I say?"

In the same speech to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Dallas, Texas, the US president criticised the level of knife crime in London, comparing one of the city's hospitals to a "war zone".