Geneva: The United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's repeated denunciations of some media outlets as "fake news" could amount to incitement to violence and had potentially dangerous consequences outside the United States.

The rebuke by Zeid bin Raad al-Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, at a news conference in Geneva was an unusually forceful criticism of a head of state by a UN official.

Prince Zeid was reacting to Trump's recent comments at a rally in Phoenix during which he spoke of "crooked media deceptions" in reports of the violent clashes at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of a counter-protester.

In Phoenix, the President's words also appeared to whip up audience hostility toward journalists.