A website featuring a white supremacist manifesto appears to show a series of photographs of Dylann Roof, the man accused of shooting dead nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The images on the website, which was registered to a “Dylann Roof” in February, appear to show the accused gunman brandishing weapons, posing outside a slave plantation and burning an American flag.

The FBI said it was “taking steps to verify the authenticity” of the website. The identity of the photographer and the author of the manifesto cannot be confirmed.

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In the photographs, the man who looks like Roof is shown wearing a black jacket with flags from apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia (which includes the region now known as Zimbabwe), some of the most oppressive governments of modern times.

He appears alone in every photograph.

The site’s homepage also features an picture of actor Russell Crowe, covered in blood, from the 1992 Australian film Romper Stomper.

Among the photos on the site are a close-up of a .45 caliber handgun, the same type of weapon that police say was used to carry out the church shootings.

The website describes how the author was radicalised, their disparaging views of different races, and a section titled “an explanation” explicitly mentioning Charleston.

“I have no choice,” the manifesto reads.

“I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country.

“We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no-one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

The author explains they were “awakened” by the media coverage of the 2012 shooting of unarmed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin by neighbourhood watch co-ordinator George Zimmerman.

Twenty-one-year-old Roof is charged with the murders of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in downtown Charleston.

Police said he spent an hour in Bible study with parishioners at the historically black church before opening fire on them on Wednesday evening.

The website surfaced as mourners arrived in Charleston from around the United States on Saturday to pay their respects to those killed in the attack.

Floral tributes at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Church.

Churchgoers may not have been target: friend

A black friend of Roof told the BBC the accused shooter was never racist towards him and questions whether the church members were the primary target.

Christon Scriven, 21, said Roof had wanted to target the nearby University of Charleston.

“Like, he told us that that church wasn’t his primary target at all. That’s why my heart goes out to those families because you guys weren’t the targets,” Mr Scriven said.

“He wanted to shoot that school up – UCA, University of Charleston. It’s three miles up the street from that church.”

Mr Scriven said he was shocked Roof did everything he had said he would do.

He also said Roof had never said anything racist to him, or treated him differently as a black man.

“I’ve never heard him say anything about hurting black people and specifically black people only. Not once,” Mr Scriven said.

Shooting highlights institutionalised racism: Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said the shooting was a violent reminder of continued institutionalised racism in the US and issued an impassioned call for gun control.

“Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished. Race remains a deep fault line in America,” Ms Clinton said.

“I know there are truths we don’t like to say out loud. But we have to – that’s the only way we can possibly move forward together.”

The killings sparked protests in South Carolina, where the controversial Confederate flag still flies alongside a memorial at the State House.

Protesters have condemned the flag as a “symbol of racism”.

Listing some of the disadvantages African-Americans face, Ms Clinton said black borrowers were three times as likely as white borrowers to be denied a mortgage, black men were more likely to be stopped and searched by police and black offenders often received stricter sentences.

Ms Clinton also said the time had come for “common sense gun reforms” and said the most recent spasm of gun violence left the nation “struggling once again to make sense of violence that is fundamentally senseless”.

“I know that gun ownership is part of the fabric of a lot of law-abiding communities,” she said.

“But I also know that we can have common sense gun reforms that keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the violently unstable, while representing responsible gun owners.”