A hacker aiming to highlight "massacres in Syria" who decided to get his message out by taking over Bridgwater Town Council's website has been stymied after IT experts stepped in quickly to help.

A man calling himself Abdellah Elmaghribi has taken over the site so that any visitors are greeted with a video and text relating to the war.

The council swiftly acted to remove the hacker's changes and revert the site back to normal.

The hacker has in the past targeted a non-league football club declaring 'I am not Charlie' after mistaking it for a Premier League team.

The hacker says: "This site has been hacked because of the world's silence about the three years of massacres that occur in Syria and this still happening . This security breach is not to make damage, It is only to deliver a specific message to the world."

The hacker, based in Morocco, has attacked websites across the globe, including Nigeria's number one music site... and now Bridgwater Town Council.

“We’ve never had anything like this happen before,” said the town clerk Alan Hurford.

“It was alright this moring and I looked at it just now and there was this message up saying it had been hacked. I don’t know what to say as it is unbelievable. We will get it rectified as soon as possible.”

The hack affects all the pages of the website and immediately redirects visitors to Abdellah Elmaghribi’s message concerning the civil war in Syria.