Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones has left Twitter after suffering horrific racist abuse.

The US actress and comedian said she felt "numb" and urged the social network to do more to crackdown on online trolls.

Her last post said: "I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All this cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the s*** I got today...wrong."

The Saturday Night Live star added: "I'm not stupid to not know racism exists. And I know it will probably live on way after me. But we have to make people take responsibility."

The hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ soon began trending on Twitter after Jones highlighted the abuse she was getting.

Ghostbusters director Paul Feig tweeted:

A Twitter spokesman said: "This type of abusive behaviour is not permitted on Twitter, and we've taken action on many of the accounts reported to us by both Leslie and others.

"We rely on people to report this type of behaviour to us but we are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to prevent this kind of abuse.

"We realise we still have a lot of work in front of us before Twitter is where it should be on how we handle these issues."

Jones is part of the all-female line-up in the new Ghostbusters movie, along with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon.