Twitter has suspended more than 70,000 accounts linked to the far-right movement QAnon.

QAnon is a conspiracy claiming that President Donald Trump is waging a war against Satan-worshipping paedophiles in politics, business and the media.

Supporters were involved in the storming of the US Congress building last week.

Twitter suspends 70,000 accounts linked to far-right movement QAnon https://t.co/Jat9j7pr8F

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 12, 2021

Twitter has deleted accounts that “share harmful QAnon-associated content at scale”.

“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behaviour that has the potential to lead to offline harm,” Twitter said in a blog post.

“Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon.”

Twitter said there were “many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts".

The accounts were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service, it added.

President Trump - viewed as a hero by the movement - has stopped short of endorsing the conspiracy theory but has described QAnon activists as "people who love our country".

In July last year, Twitter said it would crack down on QAnon accounts on the platform, stop recommending associated content and block URLs linked to it from being shared on the platform.

In 2019, the FBI issued a warning about "conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists" and designated QAnon a potential domestic extremist threat.