ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

Milo Yiannopoulos has refused to apologise after making “a joke” about “vigilante death squads gunning down journalists” days before a gunman opened fire at a US newspaper.

The former Brietbart editor was accused of inciting violence after he texted the comment to journalists from the New York Observer and Daily Beast after they approached him for statements.

The far-right activist wrote: “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”

On Thursday five people were killed when an attacker armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades burst into Capital Gazette Offices in Annapolis, Maryland.

Following the shooting, a number of people took to social media linking Mr Yiannopolous’ words to the horrific shooting.

Mr Yiannopolous responded in a lengthy Facebook post in which he described his comment a "private joke" and an "offhand troll".

He accused “left-wing journalists” of “exploiting these deaths to score political points against me”.

He said: “It’s disgusting. I regret nothing I said, though of course like any normal person I am saddened to hear of needless death.”

He continued: “I sent a troll about ‘vigilante death squads’ as a *private* response to a few hostile journalists who were asking me for comment, basically as a way of saying, ‘F**k off’. They then published it.

“Amazed they were pretending to take my joke as a ‘threat’, I reposted these stories on Instagram to mock them — and to make it clear that I wasn’t being serious."

“I made a private, offhand troll to two hostile reporters, who breathlessly publicised it and like vermin their fellow journalists swarmed to remind the world how much they hate Milo,” he added later in the post.