Outraged African countries seek Trump's apology!

• Critics of the president blasted the vulgar comments made in the Oval Office.

A group of 54 "extremely appalled" African countries have demanded that US President Donald Trump retract and apologise for his reported slur against them.After an emergency session to weigh Trump's remarks, the group of African ambassadors to the United Nations said it was "concerned at the continuing and growing trend from the US administration towards Africa and people of African descent to denigrate the continent and people of colour".

The group is "extremely appalled at, and strongly condemns the outrageous, racist and xenophobic remarks by the president of the United States of America as widely reported by the media", a statement added, demanding a "retraction and an apology". Meanwhile, Trump offered a partial denial in public but privately defended his extraordinary remarks disparaging Haitians and African countries.

Trump said he was only expressing what many people think but won't say about immigrants from economically depressed countries, according to a person who spoke to the president as criticism of his comments ricocheted around the globe.

Critics of the president blasted the vulgar comments made in the Oval Office. In a meeting with a group of senators, Trump had questioned why the US would accept more immigrants from Haiti and "shit hole countries" in Africa as he rejected a bipartisan immigration deal, according to one participant and people briefed on the remarkable conversation.

The comments revived charges that Trump is racist and roiled already tenuous immigration talks that included discussion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programmes, or DACA.

"The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used," Trump insisted in early tweets Friday, pushing back on some depictions of the meeting.