ISIS threatens Twitter employees in U.S. and Europe

A popular ISIS-affiliated Twitter account is calling for the assassination of Twitter employees in San Francisco and Europe. The threats come in response to Twitter's policy of shutting down ISIS Twitter accounts.

Vocativ, who first reported the news, says that the threatening tweets are circulating among ISIS supporters and are part of a larger campaign by ISIS supporters against Twitter. The campaign involves ISIS forums hosting discussions on circumventing Twitter's ISIS account bans as well as how to "attack" Western and American Twitter accounts by "flooding them with ISIS propaganda."

The series of tweets, which began on Sunday night, suggests attacking specific American targets who are Twitter employees. The account responsible, which was suspended on Monday, asked for the help of "lone wolves" — a.k.a. ISIS supporters living in the U.S. and Europe. The Twitter handle, @dawlamoon, claims to represent Al Nusra Al Maqdisia, "The Supporters of Jerusalem," a group that "pledged loyalty to ISIS in February and claimed to have participated in the Gaza war on its behalf," Vocativ reports.

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Before posting the Twitter threats, @dawlamoon posted official ISIS materials, including photos from field operations, Vocativ reports, and while the account had been previously suspended, it was reopened several times under different usernames. What's concerning, however, is the fact that more than 11 percent of the account's interactions in the last month were with American-based Twitter accounts. And as Vocativ notes, a recent CNN poll found that 70 percent of American respondents believed ISIS "has the resources to launch an attack against the United States."