Dubai: Barbados-born pop star Rihanna posted #FreePalestine on her twitter feed on Tuesday, but deleted it eight minutes later after she received a barrage of replies criticising her.

“She didn’t even realise it was a tweet until she started hearing from her fans,” TMZ quoted a source close to Rihanna as saying.

They went on to explain that the singer had been reading up on the Middle Eastern conflict online when she “clicked a link”.

Instead she posted a picture of a Palestinian and Israeli boy hugging with the caption, “Let’s pray for peace and a swift end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! Is there any hope?”

Rihanna is not the only victim of pro-Israeli internet trolls, just last week the British band Coldplay received 12,000 comments within a day, after posting a link on their Facebook page for a music video by OneWorld entitled “Freedom for Palestine”.

Many of them contained promises to boycott the band, but other comments were praising the band for its stance.