A Twitter account with suspected links to the terrorist organisation the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIL, has called for the assassination of Twitter employees as retribution for the social networking site's crackdown on accounts related to the group.
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The now-suspended account @Dawlamoon issued a series of tweets on Sunday night, calling upon "lone wolves" to respond to the actions of Twitter management "by directly attacking their employees and physically assassinating them", according to online news site Vocativ.
The four tweets, which were written in Arabic and have been translated by Vocativ, said the attacks would be carried out by "sleeper cells of death" and warned Twitter management "that if they do not stop their campaign in the virtual world, we will the bring the war to them in the real world on the ground".
A later tweet said: "Every Twitter employee in San Francisco in the United States should bear in mind and watch over himself because on his doorstep there might be a lone wolf assassin waiting."
A hashtag translating to "the concept of the lone wolf attacks" accompanied each of the tweets.
"Our security team is investigating the veracity of these threats with relevant law enforcement officials," a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable.
The @Dawlamoon account is reportedly linked to a Jerusalem-based group called Al Nusra Al Maqdisia, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in February and claims to have engaged in the Gaza war as agents of the terrorist organisation.
While the account's exact connection to ISIL cannot be independently verified, the group is frequently referenced in online ISIL forums, and many of its Twitter followers had profiles depicting the Islamic State's flag, according to a report from Vocativ.
The account, which reportedly published Islamic State material and updates on the group's activities in Syria and Iraq, was repeatedly shut down by Twitter only to resurface under slightly altered user names.
The latest iteration had nearly 3000 followers when it was suspended by Twitter on Monday.
Social media has become a crucial part of the Islamic State's propaganda strategy. Its supporters have used Twitter to disseminate the group's terrorist message, communicate with its followers and issue calls to arms among its supporters.
In response, Twitter has waged an online war against the terrorist organisation, suspending its affiliated accounts.
In August, the social media site extended its suspension to any users who shared images from the video footage showing the execution of US journalist James Foley by the terrorists.
Despite Twitter's best efforts to rid its site of Islamic State-related accounts, one analysis found that more than 27,000 accounts were still tweeting pro-Islamic State messages following the circulation of the footage of Mr Foley's execution.
