German broadcaster removes TV intro after Elon Musk takes legal action

German public broadcaster ZDF has removed part of a report that claimed tech trillionaire Elon Musk had called for migrants to be hunted in Northern Ireland.

ZDF conceded its wording was "misleading" while Musk said "legal action is being taken against ZDF for their outrageous lies".

Violence erupted in Belfast last week, following a brutal knife attack in a street in the north of the city.

Police arrested a Sudanese man at the scene in north Belfast and he was later remanded in custody by a court on a charge of attempted murder.

The victim was seriously wounded and the court heard he had lost his left eye in last week's attack, which prompted unrest in Belfast and led to homes and vehicles being set alight.

The recent disorder in Northern Ireland attracted widespread international attention, including in Germany, where migration has also been a highly charged issue.

On Friday 12 June, a presenter introduced an edition of news magazine programme ZDFheute Live about the violence in Belfast entitled "How Musk is fuelling the protests" .

"A brutal attempted murder on a public street in Belfast," she explained in the now-removed introduction to the report. "Someone takes a video which goes viral. Following that, a racist mob is hunting migrants. The call for that came from a British right-wing extremist and tech billionaire Elon Musk."