Emmerdale's Shila Iqbal fired from soap over offensive social media posts

Shila Iqbal has been fired from Emmerdale over historic offensive tweets, the soap has confirmed.

The actress, who played Aiesha Richards on the show, was only made a series regular at the end of March.

It is understood she was 19 when the tweets in question were posted in 2013.

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A spokeswoman for the soap said: “As a consequence of historic social media posts Shila Iqbal has left her role as Aiesha Richards on Emmerdale.

“The programme took the decision not to renew her contract as soon as these posts were brought to the company’s attention.”

Iqbal, who has also appeared in Lala’s Ladies, Citizen Khan and the film Eaten By Lions, has since deleted her Twitter account.

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MailOnline reports that the actress was immediately removed from the show after the messages were brought to bosses’ attention. Iqbal then deleted her Twitter account when the news emerged.

According to that report, Iqbal has released an apologetic statement:

“I am terribly sorry and take full responsibility for my use of such inappropriate language. I have paid the price and can no longer continue the job I loved the most at Emmerdale.

“Although I was young when I made the Tweets, it was still completely wrong of me to do so and I sincerely apologise.

“The only consideration I would ask is that I have recently received hateful tweets telling me that as a Muslim my Emmerdale role means that I am ‘committing sinful acts, promoting sin and deliberately going against the Quran’.

“We live in sensitive times for members of all communities and especially those in multi-racial Rochdale where I grew up.

“I regret that I too have let people down by the use of such language, albeit six years ago. I, like everyone else, have a responsibility about the language I have used on social media as well as in conversation.”