In a speech to supporters in South Carolina, Donald Trump praised a 'fake' story about a US general executing 49 Muslims using bullets dripped in pigs blood.

Trump alleged General John Pershing ordered the shooting of Filipino Muslim resistance fighters in the "early 1900s", MSNBC reports.

The Republican front runner said: "He took fifty bullets, and he dipped them in pig’s blood

"And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the fifty people, and they shot 49 of those people.

"And the fiftieth person he said: ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened’. And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem, okay?"

General Pershing was an US military leader in the early 20th century who led US forces in the First World War.

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This recurring myth about Pershing's tenure as military governor of the Moros region in the Philippines between 1909 and 1913 has been rebuffed by rumour busting website, Snopes.

According to Snopes, this story has been circulated widely in different forms on the internet since the 9/11 attacks.

To loud applause, Trump added: "We better start getting tough and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads or we’re not gonna have a country, folks.

"By the way, this is something you can read in the history books. Not a lot of history books, because they don’t like teaching this."

A member of the crowd told reporters: "We need someone who can lead the country because people are scared to death.