U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted reports of London looking like a “war zone” amidst surging knife crime, as he defended U.S. gun rights at the National Rifle Association (NRA) conference.

President Trump had sarcastically asked whether liberals want to ban vans, trucks, and other vehicles which have been used to carry out deadly terror attacks before turning to London, where a deadly crime wave has seen soaring rates of knife and gun crime under mayor Sadiq Khan.

Speaking at the event in Dallas, Texas, he said: “I recently read a story that, in London, which has unbelievably tough gun laws, a once very prestigious hospital, right in the middle, is like a war zone for horrible stabbing wounds.

“Yes, that’s right, they don’t have guns, they have knives, and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital. They say it’s as bad a military war zone hospital. Knives, knives, knives… London hasn’t been used to that; they’re getting used to it, pretty tough.”

Khan’s London: Lead Surgeon Says Hospital Like Afghan War Zone, Two More Killed Overnight https://t.co/glUWVQtdTF — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 5, 2018

“We’re here today because we recognise a simple fact. The one thing that has always stood between the American people and the elimination of our Second Amendment rights has been conservatives in Congress willing to fight for those rights, and we’re fighting,” he told the audience.

It is likely that the President was referring to remarks by Dr Mark Griffiths, the lead surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust, who last month reported that his military colleagues find the situation in London hospitals to be similar to those at healthcare facilities in “war-torn Afghanistan”.

Warning that ultra-violence is “the new normal” in the capital, with London “looking more like South Africa” than Britain as a result of the rate of knife and gun attacks, the consultant trauma surgeon predicted that the city’s deadly crime epidemic will develop into “carnage” over the summer months.