X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, has been restricted in Tanzania, after a number of accounts, including official government ones, were hacked.
Earlier this week the official police account was compromised, with explicit sexual images and incorrect information being shared from it.
A few hours after the hack it was reported that X was unavailable across the country.
On Wednesday people in Dar es Salaam, the country’s biggest city, could still not access X unless they used a VPN, which is illegal in Tanzania without a permit. However, people in other parts of the country said they could access the site.
This comes amid growing tensions in Tanzania ahead of elections in October. Opposition leaders have been arrested on trumped-up charges, and a number of Kenyan activists, who had come to Tanzania in solidarity with their Tanzanian counterparts, were deported.
[Image: By Chen Hualin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22268124]