Hacker collective says it has taken control of almost 100 Isis-affiliated accounts and warns of more to come

The hacker collective Anonymous claims to have taken control of almost 100 Twitter accounts associated with Isis in an operation begun in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

The accounts seized in “#OpIsis”, loosely linked to #OpCharlieHebdo, no longer exist, having been either closed down by Anonymous or suspended by Twitter.

In the video put up by the group to report its success, a masked speaker, talking in the computer-generated speech Anonymous uses, says: “The terrorists that are calling themselves Islamic State (Isis) are not Muslims. Isis, we will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you. From now on no safe place for you online. You will be treated like a virus and we are the cure. We own the internet.”

The group also names a selection of Facebook accounts “suspected to have been keeping contact with the terrorists Isis in Syria and Iraq” and says it “won’t hurt to keep an eye on them”.

It is not yet clear whether Anonymous’s actions have had any wider effect on Isis’s ability to organise using social media. While Anonymous says there will be “more to come”, Isis members continue to create accounts as fast as they are taken down.

Isis already has to contend with Twitter trying to remove accounts it identifies as promoting terrorism; in August 2014 there were reports that it was considering abandoning mainstream social networks.