Huffington Post accused of 'poor judgement' after appearing to identify Zayn Malik as an Isis militant

The image of the former boy band member appeared above a story about the notorius jihadist group

'Zayn Malik is mentioned in the story, but is obviously not part of ISIS' (Huffington Post/ Twitter)

The Huffington Post has apologised after apparently identifying former One Direction star Zayn Malik as a member of Isis.

The news website published the image above a podcast entitled “What ISIS wants: To destroy the ‘gray zone of coexistence’”.

While Malik is mentioned briefly as an aside in the podcast and in one sentence of the accompanying article, many social media users criticised the decision - prompting an apology on the website's Twitter account.

Alongside the apology was a clarification that Malik is “obviously not part of Isis” along with a picture of their original mistake.

The gaffe was spotted by thousands of twitter users, with the post receiving more than thousand retweets and over 600 likes.

Hundreds ridiculed the apology, accusing the website of “poor judgement.”

David A Graham said: “It's cool how you have deleted and apologized for it, but the screenshot still makes for great #shareable #content.”

Another user, named Nately, posted: “That actually just made it worse."