President Donald Trump on Tuesday (local time) again attacked the city of Baltimore, suggesting that violent crime there is worse than in Honduras, a Central American country known for a high level of homicide violence.
In an interview with The Washington Post, the president said, "Baltimore happens to be about the worst case."
"If you look at it statistically, it's like, the number of shootings, the number of crimes, the number of everything -- this morning I heard a statistic, Baltimore is worse than Honduras, okay?"
The remarks came after Trump provoked accusations of being a racist when he attacked prominent African-American lawmaker Elijah Cummings, a high-profile critic of his administration, whose district covers much of Baltimore.
Trump had described the country's 30th largest city and surrounding areas as a "very dangerous and filthy place" where "no human being would want to live."
He called Cummings -- the son of sharecroppers in South Carolina -- a "racist." The remarks prompted widespread accusations of racism, which the president has denied.
The President also renewed an attack that he had made on Monday, blaming Cummings for what he described, without evidence, as "billions" of dollars in wasted federal aid aimed at revitalising Baltimore -- money that "could have built 20 brand-new cities,".
According to FBI data from 2017, the latest full-year figures available, Baltimore had a murder rate of 55.8 per 100,000 population, which was less than that of St Louis, Missouri.
Baltimore, near Washington, has around 620,000 residents.
Meanwhile, the Honduran Security Ministry said last year that the homicide rate in the Central American country was 42.8 per 100,000 people in 2017. The rate hit a high of 85 per 100,000 in 2011, according to a report issued by the United Nations.
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