Al Jazeera Arabic Twitter account restored

The Twitter account of Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel has been restored after being briefly suspended.

The Doha-based network said Saturday’s suspension appeared to be caused by an “organised campaign”.

The account went offline at around 10am local time (07:00 GMT) and was restored within a few hours.

Engineers at Al Jazeera Arabic who were in communication with Twitter said there was a “storm attack” of mass reports of the account to Twitter, which forced the algorithm to temporarily suspend the account. 

“Al Jazeera Arabic Channels’s twitter account has been briefly suspended earlier today, the account is once again active,” Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement.

“Al Jazeera is investigating the reasons behind the suspension. We would like to assure our viewers that Al Jazeera continues to abide by its professional standards and continues its efforts to reach out to audiences via all possible means.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to request for comment. 

According to Twitter’s website, accounts are suspended due to “spam”, if an account’s “security is at risk” or if an account is reported as “violating [Twitter’s] rules surrounding abuse”. 

Al Jazeera was recently the target of coordinated hacking attacks targeting its different platforms.

The developments come as countries including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt have cut ties with Qatar, where the network is headquartered.