A woman rushed past security and threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas on Thursday, but it missed and the former US secretary of state laughed off the incident.

A woman rushed past security and threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas on Thursday, but it missed and the former US secretary of state laughed off the incident.

The woman launched the projectile at the former First Lady as she was addressing a meeting of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI).

"What was that, a bat?... Is that somebody throwing something at me?" Clinton, 66, said initially at the event at the Mandalay Bay hotel/casino, according to video footage by the local KTNV station.

The blonde woman who threw the shoe was immediately escorted out of the hall, her hands in the air. She was later arrested, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

A spokesman for the organizers said the woman was not accredited for the meeting.

The most famous shoe-thrower of recent years was the Iraqi journalist who hurled his own footwear at president George W. Bush at a press conference in Baghdad in December 2008.

Muntazer al-Zaidi was sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a head of state. That was reduced to one year on appeal, and his sentence was cut further for good behavior.

In February 2009 a German research student threw a shoe at Chinese premier Wen Jiabao during a speech at Cambridge University. Martin Jahnke, 27, was cleared of committing a public order offense.