Twitter has apologised after the phrase "Kill all Jews" appeared to a number of users.

The words came up as part of a trending topic on the site's homepage, which meant that people were shown the violently antisemitic messages when they logged in.

The phrase had been posted because of an attack on a synagogue in New York, where the words were sprayed onto a wall in just the latest of a series of high-profile attacks on Jewish people.

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Twitter said that it was "sorry for the mistake" and that the message would no longer appear. It had only shown to local New York users as part of its geographically-focused trending topics, which are supposed to allow people to see what others are talking about in their error.

"This was trending as a result of coverage and horrified reactions to the vandalism against a synagogue in New York," the site said in a statement first reported by BuzzFeed. "Regardless, it should not have appeared as a trend.

"At times, we do prevent certain content from trending and we have now done so with this trend."

The words had been sprayed inside a staircase at Union Temple in Brooklyn Heights, along with a variety of other antisemitic message.

It had been covered significantly by national media outlets in part because it happened around the same time as the mass killing at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in US history.