THE French Interior ­Minister has ordered police in western France to take action against a mayor and politician who allegedly told a group of itinerant Roma, parked illegally near his town, that Hitler had not killed enough of them.

Gilles Bourdouleix of the UDI centrist party was recorded by a reporter making the comment during a row with the group, which had parked 100 camper vans on a field near Cholet without a permit.

His remarks were reported as President Francois Hollande moves to defuse growing anger over illegal Roma camps from conservatives and frustrated taxpayers, who feel social services are being abused.

Last week, Mr Hollande's Socialist Party proposed a law making it easier to evict such groups amid worries that the issue could prove damaging to his unpopular government in municipal elections one year from now.

The mayor said his comments had been distorted. "I mumbled something like, 'if it was Hitler he would have killed them here', meaning, 'thank goodness I'm not Hitler and so there's no reason to call me Hitler'," he said. "This is shameful score-settling which aims to smear me."

"This is not a slip of the tongue," Interior Minister Manuel Valls said. At Mr Valls's request, a police prefect filed a complaint with a state prosecutor, accusing Bourdouleix of 'praising crimes against humanity', police said.

Earlier this month, the centre-right mayor of Nice expelled one group from a sports field, vowing to "crush" the "delinquents", and urged other mayors to revolt against what he called leniency by the Socialists.

The head of the UDI, Jean-Louis Borloo, has said he would seek to exclude Mr Bourdouleix at the next meeting of the party's executive committee