Hundreds of Iraqi protesters have stormed the offices of a Saudi television in Baghdad after the broadcaster aired a report disrespectful to the commanders and leaders of the Axis of Resistance.
A security source said between 400 and 500 people made their way into the Baghdad studios of Saudi broadcaster MBC after midnight.
“They wrecked the electronic equipment, the computers, and set fire to a part of the building,” the source told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.
He said the fire had been extinguished and the crowd dispersed by police. “Security forces are still deployed near the building,” the source added.
The report clubbed the Axis of Resistance - Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas, Yemen’s Ansarullah and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq – and their leaders with terrorists like Osama bin Laden.
Named in the report were Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut last month, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran in late July.
It also cited Haniyeh’s successor Yahya Sinwar, who organized Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (Storm) inside southern Israeli-occupied territories on October 7 last year.
The report broadcast by the Saudi television channel referred to the martyred commanders and leaders of the Axis of Resistance as "terrorists".
Sabereen News, a Telegram news channel associated with Iraqi anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), published videos of protesters in Baghdad brandishing the flags of various resistance groups.
The report comes at a time when resistance groups – most notably Hamas and Hezbollah, but also their allies in Yemen, Iraq and Syria – have been launching anti-Israeli operations in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for more than a year.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has been conducting such operations against sensitive targets lying across the occupied territories since October 7 last year, when the Israeli regime began a ferocious war on the Gaza Strip.
At least 42,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the brutal Israeli military onslaught so far.
The Iraqi coalition has also carried out retaliatory attacks against the US occupation bases across Iraq and neighboring Syria over Washington’s unbridled political, military, and intelligence support for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.