IT’S one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War.

Children flee for their lives after a napalm bomb attack in Trang Bang southeast of the country.

In the centre of the frame running towards the camera is a naked nine-year-old girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, also known as the ‘Napalm Girl’.

The Pulitzer Prize winning image taken by AP photographer Nick Ut on June 8, 1972 jolted people around the war. Some say it hastened the end of the Vietnam War.

Yet for some reason the historic image has been censored on Facebook.

The photograph appeared in a post by Norwegian writer Tom Egeland that discussed images that changed the history of warfare.

But the post was deleted by the company and Egeland was suspended from the social media site.

Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, then reported on the suspension — using the same photograph in an article posted on Facebook — and lo and behold the newspaper received a message from Facebook asking it to “either remove or pixelate” the photograph.

Aftenposten editor-in-chief and CEO Espen Egil Hansen said Facebook deleted the article and image from their Facebook page before they could respond.

As a result, the newspaper has written a front page open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticising the decision to censor the image.

“I am editor-in-chief of the Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten. I am writing this letter to inform you that I shall not comply with your requirement to remove a documentary photography from the Vietnam war made by Nick Ut,” the letter begins. It continues: “Not today, and not in the future.”

Hansen noted Facebook “has become a world-leading platform for spreading information, for debate and for social contact between persons.” He called on Zuckerberg to live up to his title as “the world’s most powerful editor”.

“I am upset, disappointed – well, in fact even afraid – of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society,” Hansen wrote.

Norwegian editor-in-chief with open letter to Mark Zuckerberg regarding Facebook censorship https://t.co/Ile7ZWXp1A pic.twitter.com/Cnktq1atCn — Aftenposten (@Aftenposten) September 8, 2016

“I am worried that the world’s most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way.”

Hansen said Facebook’s decision to delete the photograph shows the company cannot “distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs”.

“Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norway’s largest newspaper, I have to realize that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility,” he wrote.

“I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly.”

Hansen then says rather than “make the world more open and connected”, such Facebook decisions “will simply promote stupidity and fail to bring human beings closer to each other”.

A search of the ‘napalm girl’ on Facebook however continues to bring up the photograph in articles posted as late as October 2015.

Last month, Facebook sacked a team of editors who managed the “trending” stories feature and replaced them with an automated system. The company said the move was designed to prevent personal bias from influencing which stories get highlighted.