Having just officaly joined Twitter, Al Qaeda have released a highly produced promotional video showing their troops in gun battles set to dramatic music

AL QAEDA has opened its first official Twitter account, inspired by the "live" coverage from terrorists who attacked a Kenyan shopping mall earlier this week.

Affiliated with an official, members-only al Qaeda website, the arabic account is believed by US officials to be an attempt to overcome an emerging political split involving rebels in Syria.

Most of the posts so far have focused upon divisions between al Qaeda factions in Syria, Iraq and the Levant.

At the time of writing, the account @shomokhalislam had issued 29 tweets and attracted 1588 followers since it activated on September 25.

Counterterrorism analysts have told the Washington Times that the account is another indicator that terrorist groups are recognising the value of social media.

"We've seen terrorist groups make increasingly effective use of social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, in recent years," said analyst Patrick Poole. "Not only is this important for propaganda purposes but also recruitment."

One of the account's first tweets links to a recruitment video on Youtube, which has been produced with cinematic quality footage and soundtracks. It depicts fighters in Syria in action against a chanting soundtrack which matches the rhythm of their automatic gunfire.

Al-Shabab, meanwhile, threatened more attacks in Kenya, saying on its English language Twitter feed that the mall attack "was just the premiere of Act 1.'' Al-Shabab has previously threatened to target Kenya until it withdraws its troops from Somalia.

The militant group, whose name means "The Youth'' in Arabic, first began using social media to threaten Kenya with a major terror attack in late 2011, after Kenya sent troops into Somalia following a spate of kidnappings of Westerners inside Kenya.

Another al Shebab message said it had been "a great pleasure to have had you completely enthralled for more than 100 hours. What a wonderful audience you've been!''.

It also boasted that the "Kenyan government is still in disarray'', saying it ``won't be until several months when it fully comprehends exactly what took place at Westgate''.

Repeated attempts to block the terrorist organisation from posting to Twitter failed as members would simply create a new account and post to their regularly used subject streams.