Donald Trump has given a baffling series of remarks while hosting survivors of religious persecution at the White House.

During the meeting in the Oval Office, Nobel laureate and Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad, told the president her harrowing story of being sold into sexual slavery by the so-called Islamic State.

She was raped, beaten and tortured before managing to escape three months later. After getting treatment in Germany, she chose to speak to the world about the horrors faced by Yazidi women.

Murad said: “We cannot find a safe place to live.  All this happened to me.  They killed my mom, my six brother.  They left behind…”

The president interrupted, asking: “Where are they now?”

Murad, looking slightly bewildered, explained: “They killed them.  They are in the mass graves in Sinjar.  And I’m still fighting just to live in safe.  Please do something.”

Trump replied: “I know the area very well, you’re talking about.  It’s a tough…yeah.”

During the same meeting, a Rohingya refugee asked the president what his plan was help the estimated 700,000 of her people who have been victims of widespread rights violations allegedly committed by the Burmese military. 

She said: “I am a Rohingya from Bangladesh refugee camp. Most of the refugees are willing to go back home as soon as possible. So, what is the plan to help us?”

Instead of reassuring the woman or offering a plan, Trump said: “Where is that exactly?”

At this point an aide interjected to tell the president it was a country located next to Burma.

Yazidi refugee Nadia Murad, 25, was among thousands of women and girls from the Yazidi minority who were kidnapped and enslaved in 2014 by the Islamic State group and was a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

The Yazidis are an ancient religious minority who trace their roots to a number of small villages in a remote part of northern Iraq.

A UN investigation into crimes committed by IS was launched in 2017 and began collecting and preserving evidence in August, the Press Association reports.

Trials of IS fighters conducted by Iraqi and Syrian forces have come under criticism from human rights groups who claim the proceedings are rushed, flawed and often reliant on confessions extracted under torture.