Police have started an investigation into “evil” abuse about the Bradford City fire disaster made by a small number of Birmingham City fans on Twitter.

A group of Bantams’ fans contacted the Championship club to report a number of tweets making offensive remarks about the Valley Parade tragedy which claimed the lives of 56 fans – including one which said it was a “shame the whole city didn’t go up in flames”.

Another by a different user includes a picture of the May 1985 tragedy with the caption: “Fireworks in Bradford are class tonight.”

Last night, a spokesman for Birmingham City confirmed details of the abuse had now been passed on to West Midlands Police for investigation and warned those involved could face stadium bans.

Some of the tweets made from a small number of accounts contain swear words or are too offensive to publish.

A friend of one of the fire’s victims, who did not want to be named, said he had seen a number of the comments and believed the perpetrators should be “named and shamed”.

“This sort of abuse has been going on for the last 18 months or so, but this is by far the nastiest.

“Usually if we see this sort of thing we ask for them to delete their tweet and apologise, but there seems to be a group of four or five people who are revelling in it.

“There is some vile stuff on there. I’ve never seen anything with that level of evil and hatred.

“They believe they can write these things online behind a wall of anonymity, but they should be legally named and shamed.

“If we see stuff like that we will report it.”

Since the abuse was reported to Birmingham City, at least one of the Twitter accounts involved has been made private and a number of tweets deleted.

A club spokesman said it responded to the reports from Bantams’ fans straight away. He added: “As soon as the offensive tweets were brought to the football club’s attention relevant details were promptly passed on to West Midlands Police.

“Birmingham City Football Club will not tolerate such behaviour and will continue to assist the police with their investigation.”

No-one at Bradford City was available to comment yesterday.