Pro-Palestinian Activists Scribble over UN Website

The group of hackers, called AnonGhost, defaced the site in the wake of rising tensions surrounding the future of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem.

The hacktivist collective claims to have coders in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. It has been active for the past 15 months.

In this latest case, AnonGhost hit a UN website used by officials to log into the UN system. The vandalized website displayed the AnonGhost logo, a message detailing the reason for the attack and images purporting to show dead Palestinian children.

The message read:

We are the sound of the forgotten people, the freedom fighter in the cyberworld and our main target is Sionisme and israhell, if you are asking why your website got hacked by us, its basically because we want to share our message and show the world who we are, we are not looking for fame but we have a goal to achieve we supporte all hackers teams and we supporte all the freedom mouvement in the world. #OpSaveAlAqsa decided , Expect us!

“No specific reason was given for attacking the UN, with the AnonGhost team apparently hitting sporadic targets in recent weeks which have included the Shropshire Fire and Rescue website and the Nottinghamshire Police website,” International Business Times reports.

The attack was carried out under the banner of Operation Save Al-Aqsa, referring to a mosque in East Jerusalem which is the third holiest site in Islam. It is also the location of Temple Mount, one of the holiest sites in Judaism.

Protests have erupted there over concerns Jews might be allowed to pray on land restricted to Muslims. An agreement was reached decades ago whereby Muslims would be able to pray on the Temple Mount while Jewish prayer would be limited to the Western Wall area.