Two foreigners ignited fury online after photos of them apparently shooting birds in a park in Southwest China's Yunnan Province went viral, however police say the gun was a toy.

A Sina Weibo user posted that two foreigners were shooting gulls in Lake Park, Kunming on Tuesday. The user claimed that bystanders tried to stop them, but they would not listen. The post included several pictures of the pair aiming their gun to support the story, and was soon shared thousands of times.

A local resident backed up this version of events, telling news portal kunming.cn that he saw the two people shooting at gulls at noon on Tuesday.

The story went viral, with many people slamming the pair and saying the police should have arrested them for a carrying weapon, given the recent detention of a Chinese man for carrying a replica pistol on a train. 

Local police told the kunming.cn that the foreigners are tourists from the US and South Africa and were simply posing for pictures. Police said the gun was a plastic toy, with no trigger or ammunition.    

Another woman surnamed Xu, who was in the pictures posted on Weibo, confirmed with media that the pair were just taking pictures. "At first I thought they were shooting, and I came over to stop them. They let touch their gun, and told me it is a toy. And then I realized I made a mistake; they were just posing for pictures."