Residents in Dorset have been warned about scam comments on an emergency service's social media posts. 

Weymouth and Portland Police have issued a statement on Facebook alerting the public to comments from social media scammers pretending to be sharing news articles.

The posts typically read something like: "A very sad detail of the incident was recorded by an eyewitness."

This would be accompanied by a link to an external page which poses as a news website. 

The police are now urging the public to ignore these comments and not to click on the links as they will likely be a scam. 

A spokesperson for Weymouth and Portland Police said: "Recently we have been noticing strange comments on our Facebook posts from spam accounts, with wording similar but not limited to:

"This is followed by a short link to an external page guised as a news website.

"Most of our followers do recognise this and will comment "scam" to which we are grateful. But if you come across this type of comment, please DO NOT click on the link.

"These are not genuine articles and will likely have computer viruses embedded in their code.

"Sadly this is not something we can stop, but we are working to delete these comments as soon as we see them."