Instagram down: App and website inaccessible according to hundreds of user reports

Outage comes minutes after Donald Trump tweeted a link to his account

The image-sharing website returned a 5xx server error and its app was also inaccessible (Getty Images)

Instagram went down on Thursday evening, according to hundreds of reports from users.

The image-sharing website returned a 5xx server error and its app was also inaccessible.

It came minutes after US President Donald Trump tweeted a link to his account and meant users were not able to view the post.

Mr Trump posted a link to a video in which he tells a cheering crowd of supporters: "We believe that family and faith, not government and beauracracy are the foundation of our society.

"You've heard me say it before on the campaign trail and I'll say it again tonight: in America, we don't worship government, we worship God."

Instagram's owner, Facebook, has been contacted for comment about why the site went down shortly after the post.

Functionality was restored shortly before 7pm UK time following an outage of about half an hour.

Instagram, like Facebook, is rarely offline.

Its large size means that any outage can cause problems across the internet, especially since it is used for corporate and media purposes.