Bahrain minister briefly hacked after Qatar cyber attack

DUBAI — Hackers temporarily took over the Twitter account of the Bahraini foreign minister on Saturday, just 10 days after a cyber attack on the official news agency of neighbouring Qatar.

The hack, which purported to be carried out in the name of a fringe militant group, came after Bahraini authorities dissolved the kingdom's last major opposition movement and after police shot dead five protesters while dispersing a long-running sit-in.

Foreign Minister Khaled Bin Ahmad 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," a reference to the satellite television channels funded by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The foreign ministry confirmed the account had been recovered on Saturday and blamed the attack on a "terrorist group", vowing to "hold accountable the individuals behind this despicable act". 

Saturday's hackers tagged their posts with the name and logo of Saraya Al Mukhtar, 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 the mainly Shiite Qatif district of eastern Saudi Arabia.

Two men were blown up in Qatif on Friday by what the Saudi authorities said was munitions they were transporting in their vehicle.