Kellyanne Conway admits 'misspeaking' but calls critics of Bowling Green Massacre remarks 'haters'

Top aide reportedly made same error in another interview earlier in the year

Kellyanne Conway has spoken out clarify her notorious “Bowling Green Massacre” comments and called her critics “haters”.

Ms Conway, President Trump's former campaign manager and now political adviser, was widely derided last week after she referred to a terrorist attack that never happened.

She told MSNBC that Iraqi refugees committed a “massacre” within the United States but most people didn’t know about it because “it didn’t get covered” by the media.

This non-event was cited as a justification for Mr Trump's controversial travel ban, intended to bar US entry to the citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries.

In fact, there was never a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky. However, there was a plot by two Iraqis living in the town to supply al-Qaeda with guns and money.

Speaking to Fox about the remarks, Ms Conway said she made a mistake: “There was a plot. They’re masterminds. I should have said 'plot,' and I should have said ‘terrorists’.

"I clarified immediately, I should have said 'terrorists' and not 'massacre'.

“I misspoke one word. The corrections in the newspapers that are attacking me are three paragraphs long every day.”

On Twitter, she referred to the remark as an "honest mistake".

However, Ms Conway has made the same error before, according to Cosmopolitan.

The magazine reported Ms Conway used the same phrase during an interview in January.

In previously unpublished quotes, she said: "Two Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined ISIS, travelled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills, and come back here, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre of taking innocent soldiers' lives away."

However, the Iraq men behind the incident Ms Conway was referring to, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan, did not kill anyone in the US.

Also, they did not return to train in the Middle East after entering the US as refugees in 2009.

They were arrested in 2011 and did admit to bombing American forces while in Iraq, and funding to al Qaeda.

Both were given extensive prison sentences.