Image caption Burger King's account has now been suspended

US fast-food company Burger King has said its Twitter account may have been hacked, after its profile picture was changed to a McDonald's logo.

The background picture on the account showed Fish McBites and some posts contained racial slurs, obscenities and references to drugs.

The firm says it asked Twitter to suspend the account and @BurgerKing has not posted since 13:15 EST (18:15 GMT).

Burger King says it will post an apology on its Facebook page.

The account tweeted that the company had been sold to rival hamburger chain McDonald's.

"We just got sold to McDonald's! Look for McDonald's in a hood near you," one post read.

It also posted messages such as: "If I catch you at a Wendys, we're fightin!"

The tweets stopped after a little more than an hour.

Meanwhile, McDonald's tweeted in response to the apparent hack: "We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking."

It is not known who might be responsible for the breach.

The development comes in the wake of a scandal across at least 12 European countries, in which it emerged that some products labelled as beef contained horsemeat.

Burger King has said it has cut ties with some of its suppliers as a precaution, in the wake of the scandal.