Bahrain minister briefly hacked after Qatar cyberattack

DUBAI: Hackers allied with Shiite militants in Bahrain seized control Saturday of the Twitter account of the island’s foreign minister, posting a series of threats to its royal family and promising to “make castles of your skulls.”

Hackers temporarily took over the Twitter account of Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa, just 10 days after a cyberattack on the official news agency of neighboring Qatar.

Al-Khalifa, a member of the royal family, tweeted he had recovered his account four hours after images of bloodied bodies, demolished mosques and what appeared to be a child’s illustration of war rolled down his official Twitter page.

The pictures were captioned: “What the petrodollar media doesn’t show you.”

“We are going to paint the floor with your blood,” another caption read.

Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Saturday afternoon acknowledging Al- Khalifa’s Twitter account had been taken over by “terrorists.”

It said it would work with Twitter to regain control of the account. It confirmed the account had been recovered, vowing to “hold accountable the individuals behind this despicable act.”

No group immediately claimed responsibility for taking over the account of the minister, though images posted bore the logo of the Mokhtar Brigade, a Shiite militant group that has claimed several bombings and attacks on security forces.

Hackers tagged their posts with the name and logo of the Brigade, also know as Saraya Al-Mukhtar, or SaM — a Shiite group with a strong online presence.

The hackers retweeted a number of posts by Numur Al- Hurriya ( Tigers of Freedom), which purports to be an opposition group in Qatif.

Neighboring Qatar is still investigating the May 24 hack of its official news agency website and Twitter account in which damaging comments about a raft of sensitive regional issues were falsely attributed to its ruler.

The hackers also posted a fake report that Qatar had severed relations with several neighboring countries.

FBI experts are helping with the investigation, sources close to the case told AFP on Friday.

It is the latest hack to cause chaos in the greater Gulf. In late May, Qatar said hackers took control of the website of its state-run news agency to publish what it called fake comments from its ruling emir about Iran, roiling relations with its neighbors.

Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera remains blocked in several countries over the row.