Royal Palace deletes cat tweet: 'not sent by us'

A photo of a cat sitting on a Brussels terrace at dusk, with the accompanying text: "Quiet evening on the terrace..." appeared yesterday around 20.30 on the Twitter account of the Belgian Royal Palace, only to disappear immediately afterward, writes Knack.

According to spokesman Pierre-Emmanuel De Bauw, the tweet was not sent by the Palace. He also insists that the account @MonarchieBe is "completely secure". The tweet appears to have been sent from the Brussels municipality of Woluwe-Saint-Lambert.

"We will contact Twitter to avoid such messages in the future,” says De Bauw. “But our account is fully protected," he reiterates, without fully excluding the possibility that the account was hacked. The @MonarchieBe Twitter account is managed by the Palace spokesman and his team, he explains.