Twitter account hacked, says official after Afghan embassy tweets slamming Ghani

Photo for representational purpose

An official of the Afghan embassy on Monday suggested that its Twitter handle was hacked after several tweets criticising embattled Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for fleeing the country were posted from it.

Abdulhaq Azad, the press secretary of the Afghan embassy in India, tweeted that he has lost control of the mission's official Twitter handle, along with a screen shot of one of the messages slamming Ghani for leaving Afghanistan.

"I have lost access to Twitter handle of @AfghanistanInIN, a friend sent screen shot of this tweet, (this tweet is hidden from me.) I have tried to log in but can't access. Seems it is hacked," Azad tweeted from his own Twitter handle.

The tweets criticising Ghani were deleted later.

Ghani and his close aides left Afghanistan on late Sunday afternoon after the Taliban was on the brink of seizing control of Kabul after taking over almost all leading cities and provincial capitals.

The Taliban fighters later entered the Afghan Presidential Palace in Kabul and virtually took control of the Afghan capital.

There were strong reactions from several Afghan leaders after Ghani left the country.

Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of Afghanistan's High Council for National Reconciliation, criticised Ghani for leaving the country and said, "God will hold him accountable and the nation will also judge."

In the last few days, Taliban fighters have swept through most parts of the country, seizing control of around 25 of 34 provincial capitals including cities such as Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and Jalalabad.Earlier, during the hearing of the matter, the top court had said that allegations of Pegasus related snooping are "serious in nature" if reports on them are correct.

It had also asked the petitioners whether they had made any efforts to file a criminal complaint on this.

Editors Guild of India has sought in its plea that a special investigation team be set up to conduct a probe into reported surveillance of journalists and others.

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