US President Donald Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account was deactivated by a Twitter employee who was leaving the company on Thursday and was down for 11 minutes before it was restored, the social media company said.

“We have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer-support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review,” Twitter said in a tweet.

“We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again,” the company said in an earlier tweet.

In a message posted a short time later, Twitter explained that Trump’s account vanished as a result of “human error”.

“Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee,” the statement said

“The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored.

“We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.”

A later post added: “Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day.

“We are conducting a full internal review.”

When the truth emerged, the rogue employee was quickly hailed a hero.

Trump has made extensive use of messages on Twitter to attack his opponents and promote his policies both during the 2016 presidential campaign and since taking office in January.

He has 41.7 million followers on Twitter.