Screengrab from footage circulated on X showing pro-Iran protestors setting fire to the Saudi MBC channel building in Baghdad.
Between 400 and 500 people attacked 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," an interior ministry source told AFP 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," he added.
Excerpts from an MBC programme had been making the rounds on Iraqi social media, sparking angry reactions.
The report had focused on "terrorism" in the region, and included resistance groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Named in the report were former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel in Beirut last month, and former Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran in July.
It also referred to Haniyeh's successor, Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in gun battle with Israeli troops Thursday in Gaza, as the "new face of terrorism".
The report came at a time where Israel has been at war against Gaza for more than a year, killing more than 42,400 people since last October, mostly children and women, triggering responses from groups in the region including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.
Hamas condemned the MBC report, stating, "At a time when our Palestinian people are facing unprecedented acts of extermination and terrorist aggression from the Zionist entity and its terrorist army for over a year, the channel aired a dark and inflammatory report against the movement and its leaders, labeling the Palestinian resistance against the occupier as terrorism."
"This represents a professional and moral failure that aligns with the propaganda and narrative of the Zionist agenda aimed at demonizing the resistance and its symbols," the group added in a statement.
Hamas demanded that the channel immediately remove the report from its platforms and apologize, considering it an insult to the owners of the channel and its management. "We also call for a revision of this malicious editorial approach that aligns with the agenda of the occupation and a focus on the crimes and atrocities our people face at the hands of the criminal Zionist entity."
Al-Azhar, the highest institution of Sunni Islam, issued a statement mourning the heroic “martyrs of the Palestinian resistance,” who have been targeted by the criminal hand of Zionism."
Al-Azhar emphasized that the martyrs of "the Palestinian resistance are not terrorists, as the enemy falsely and deceitfully tries to portray them." Instead, they are "steadfast resisters clinging to the soil of their homeland, until God granted them martyrdom while they were repelling the enemy’s plot and aggression, defending their land, their cause, and our cause,” the statement asserts.
In its statement, Al-Azhar criticized the global silence surrounding these atrocities, likening it to "the silence of the dead in their graves." It denounced international law as being rendered ineffective, stating that its value is not worth the price of the ink with which it was written.
The institution also called for a vigilant stand against the Zionist media machine, which "seeks to distort the image of the Palestinian resistance in the minds of youth and children." Al-Azhar emphasized the importance of countering these narratives that generalize the portrayal of resistance as terrorism.
The Saudi General Authority for Media Regulation later Saturday announced that it had conducted an investigation with officials from a television channel- without naming the channel- due to the release of a news report that violated Saudi media laws.
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