Yemen said on Thursday it evicted Al-Jazeera, which gives extensive coverage of Arab revolts, after it said footage of torture in an Iraqi jail was broadcast as having been filmed in the Arabian peninsula state.
The closure of the Arab news channel's offices in Sanaa on Wednesday was the result of "false information and the broadcast of mistaken footage," the information ministry said.
The ministry, in a statement carried by state news agency Saba, accused the Qatar-based satellite television of "lacking credibility, professionalism and impartiality" in its coverage of anti-regime protests in Yemen.
On Wednesday, Al-Jazeera ran footage of torture in an Iraqi prison as if the footage had been shot in Yemen, it said.
The channel, in a statement which did not refer to the incident, condemned its ouster from events on the ground in Yemen and said its Sanaa offices were "ransacked by 20 armed men" on Wednesday.
"When we said the authorities should provide us adequate protection," the incident was "not what we had in mind," it said. "Our team in Yemen have been bravely and oustandingly covering events there for several years."
Yemen, which accuses Al-Jazeera of bias in favour of the anti-regime camp, last Saturday ordered two of the channel's correspondents to leave the country, saying they were working illegally and had acted unprofessionally.
The order came a day after loyalists of embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime gunned down 52 pro-democracy protesters in Sanaa, provoking widespread international condemnation.
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