Hackers attack several BBC Twitter accounts

Several BBC Twitter accounts, including its weather, Arabic and Radio Ulster feeds were hijacked by a group calling itself Syrian Electronic Army earlier.

A series of tweets about fake weather conditions in Middle Eastern countries began appearing on Thursday afternoon.

The accounts are the latest in a series of large corporate Twitter feeds to have been breached.

The BBC said that it now has control of all three accounts and all inappropriate content has been deleted.

A BBC spokeswoman said: "We apologise to our audiences that this unacceptable material appeared under the BBC's name."

The attacks began in the early afternoon on Thursday. At the same time, BBC staff were alerted to a phishing email that had been sent to some BBC email accounts. It is not yet clear if the two are related.

The email contained a link that if clicked on could expose password details.

The BBC weather Twitter feed, which has 60,000 followers, was among those affected.