AP Twitter account hacked to falsely report attack on Obama

Washington, Apr 23 (EFE).- The Twitter account of The Associated Press was hacked into on Tuesday for several seconds and a fake tweet was posted there reporting two explosions at the White House that allegedly wounded President Barack Obama.

"Breaking: Two explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured," read the tweet on the official AP Twitter account a few minutes after 1 p.m.

AP immediately suspended its account temporarily to prevent the tweet from being resent and it reported that it had been the target of a hacker attack.

Julie Pace, AP's chief White House correspondent, said that the tweet was "obviously false," adding shortly thereafter that "anything that was just sent out about any incident at the White House is actually false."

Pace was attending the daily press conference by White House press secretary Jay Carney.

Carney said that "the president is fine. I was just with him."

The brief panic unleashed on Twitter for a few minutes as a result of the tweet caused the Dow Jones index to plunge some 140 points in just a few seconds, but once the tweet was identified as bogus Wall Street recovered its losses equally quickly.