San Francisco: Having unleashed terror on Twitter already, by posting grisly images of beheading of two US journalists and massacre of Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, the Islamic State extremists have now declared the war on social media site itself, issuing a direct assassination threat to its employees in San Fransisco, US.
The threat by the IS-linked group was made as the Twitter has been suspending the accounts linked to the jihadist group that has been carrying out beheadings and summary executions across Iraq and Syria, and using Twitter to spread fear and propaganda by posting gruseome images and news about its brutal acts online.
According to a news site named Vocativ, that has translated the tweets of an ISIS-linked group, a series of threatening tweets were posted on Sunday night from am account with the twitter handle @DAWLAMOON. The account was then suspended later on Monday as it carried murder threats against Twitter's employees at its headquarters in Silicon Valley.
The translation of the threatening tweets, which used the hashtag 'The concept of Lone Wolves' as done by the Vocative is as below:
#The_Concept_of_Lone_Wolf_Attacks The time has arrived to respond to Twitter’s management by directly attacking their employees and physically assassinating them!! Those who will carry this out are the sleepers cells of death.”
"Twitter management should know 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,” reads another tweet.
In another tweet, the suspended account threatened the Twitter employees in San Francisco directly, saying that they have an assassin waiting at their doorsteps if they continued shutting down the extremists' accounts.
#The_Concept_of_Lone_Wolf_Attacks 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.”
The suspended twitter account reportedly belonged to Al Nusra Al Maqdisia (The Supporters of Jerusalem)—a Jerusalem-based group that vowed obeisance to the ISIS this February.
Twitter has been active in deleting the jihadist-linked accounts, as the Islamic State militants use the social media site effectively enough to communicate instantly, spread propaganda and hate messages, and hence trap vulnerable young minds from across the globe into joining them.
Just a day ago, speaking to the NBC news' "Meet the Press", US President had stressed on the need to check the IS growing influence on Twitter, saying, "They are really good on social media..They have understand how to (convey) message to disaffected youth throughout the Arab world and throughout the Sunni world..".
