Group linked to ISIS threatens Twitter execs

An account seemingly linked to a group supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has leveled a number of terror threats against Twitter staffers.

A series of tweets posted this weekend, first noticed by Vocativ, call for “lone wolf” attacks against executives of the micro-blogging service as retribution for taking down ISIS’s messages.

{mosads}“The time has arrived to respond to Twitter’s management by directly attacking their employees and physically assassinating them!!” the Twitter account wrote, according to Vocativ’s translation. “Those who will carry this out are the sleepers cells of death.”

“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,” it added in another tweet.

The Twitter account — @dawlamoon — reportedly claimed to represent a Jerusalem-based group that pledged loyalty to ISIS earlier this year and was active in the Gaza conflict. The account was suspended after this weekend’s tweets.

ISIS has been an avid user of social media, a tactic that some analysts have said has been helpful in growing its ranks and notoriety. Images of the group’s training exercises and beheading of two American journalists have spread quickly on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites.

Some companies have moved swiftly to block or silence accounts linked to the terrorists and images they release.