The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has awarded a medal to the Muslim shop assistant who hid Jews from a terror attack at the kosher supermarket in Paris in January.

Malian-born Lassana Bathily was given the Medal of Valour at the centre's annual National Tribute Dinner at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles last week.

Mr Bathily, 24, ushered a group of people, one with a baby, into a basement cold storage room at the Hyper Cacher supermarket as a gunman murdered shoppers upstairs.

He told French television: "When they came running down I opened the door of the fridge. Several came in with me. I turned off the light and the fridge. When I turned off the cold, I put them in. I closed the door. I told them to stay calm and I said 'you stay quiet there, I'm going back out'."

After the shoot-out, he said that many of the customers he had helped came out and shook his hand. "When they got out, they thanked me," he said.

In France there had been calls for him to be officially recognised for his bravery, and a petition was circulated in Israel urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to back the move.