San Francisco (CNN Business) Facebook has removed hundreds of fake Facebook and Instagram pages, groups, and accounts that it says were run by an Israeli firm that was targeting countries in Africa.

The Israeli company Archimedes Group spent more than $800,000 running Facebook ads and their accounts had almost 3 million followers, Facebook said in a blog post announcing the removals Thursday.

Archimedes Group used fake accounts and "represented themselves as locals, including local news organizations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians," Facebook said.

The company primarily targeted Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia but also had some activity targeting Latin America and Southeast Asia, according to Facebook.

website that appears to belong to the Archimedes Group boasts that its teams "took significant roles in many political and public campaigns, among them Presidential elections and other social media projects all over the world."

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