Donald Trump claimed that he helped in the clearing of rubble in the wake of the 11 September attacks that tore a hole in the New York skyline.

Going on the offensive against his main rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, in Buffalo, New York, he launched on a tangent about the aftermath of the terrorist attack, and how the hard work of the rescue workers reflect true “New York values.”

“Everyone who helped clear the rubble - and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit - but I want to tell you: Those people were amazing,” said Mr Trump. “Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didn’t know what was going to come down on all of us - and they handled it.”

Mr Trump did not explain how precisely he helped, however.

The comment occurred during shortly after the native-New Yorker mistakenly referred to 9/11 as 7/11 - a popular American convenience store chain.

“I was down there and I watch our police and our firemen down at 7/11, down at the World Trade Center right after it came down. And I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”

The Washington Post published a video of Mr Trump speaking with German media in the immediate aftermath of the attacks where he said he would be involved in reconstruction in some way.

“Well, I have a lot of men down here right now,” Mr Trump said. “We have over 100 and we have about 125 coming. So we'll have a couple of hundred people down here. ... We will be involved in some form in helping to reconstruct."

The 11 September attacks have come up numerous times throughout Mr Trump’s campaign. Most notably, Mr Trump - who has campaigned on a hardline immigration idea that would block Muslim immigration to the US - claimed he saw a group of Muslims celebrating the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers.

“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering, as that building was coming down,” he said when calling for surveillance and databases of Muslims.