Bahrain Foreign Minister's Twitter account briefly hacked

Bahrain's Foreign Minister said his official Twitter account was briefly hacked for three hours on Saturday and hackers attributed false tweets to him.

Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said his account had been hacked by what he described as a "terrorist group," attributing false tweets that had been sent out on the account to him, Efe news reported.

"Thank God! The account has been recovered," Al Khalifa tweeted after his account was restored to him. "Thank you for your effort dear friends in informing Twitter. God bless you," the minister tweeted after recovering his account.

The hackers had used the official account to denounce "crimes" against the Shias, the second largest branch of Islam and the majority sect in Bahrain.

In now-deleted tweets, the hacked account showed photographs of people killed by gunfire, burnt Quran pages and a mosque being demolished by bulldozers, with the label of Saraya al-Mukhtar, the name of a Shia armed group.

According to the hackers, these photos showed the crimes of the "Al Khalifa occupation" against the Bahraini people, which are not shown in the "petrodollar media".

The tweets also claimed that al-Awamiya, a town in the Shia-majority al-Qatif province of Saudi Arabia, had been under siege for 24 days and was repeatedly attacked by Saudi forces with mortars.

--IANS

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