A Saudi news channel has come under fire after airing a report last week calling the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorists”.

The MBC report, which sparked a fierce online backlash, called several groups and individuals the “faces of terrorism,” including slain Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, as well as the recently killed Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, the Iranian major. General Qassem Soleimani, killed in 2020, and Al-Qaeda and its late leader Osama bin Laden, killed by American forces in 2011.

Saudi Arabia’s media authority ordered an investigation into MBC after the backlash, saying the report violated its media policies.

He added that regulators “continuously monitor the extent to which media outlets adhere to the kingdom’s media regulations and content controls and will not be lax in enforcing the rules against any violators.”

The report has since been removed from all platforms.

In Iraq, hundreds of protesters stormed and set fire to the channel’s offices in Baghdad following the broadcast of the report, filming themselves vandalizing equipment and smashing computers.

Shortly after, Iraqi regulators suspended the channel’s operating license for “violating media broadcasting rules.”

“Given the violation by the MBC satellite channel of the media broadcasting rules through its repeated violations and attacks against the martyrs, the leaders of victory and the heroic leaders of the resistance who are leading the battle of honor against the usurping Zionist entity, we confirm that we have taken all necessary legal measures. and suspending its operations in Iraq,” the Iraqi regulator said in a statement published by the official news agency.