Cairo: Dreaded terror group Islamic State has released a video urging Muslims to destroy their satellite TV sets to prevent hostile channels ‘destroying their beliefs and polluting their ethics’.
The video clip, filmed in Raqqa and monitored in Egypt, was shared on ISIS official Telegram account on Tuesday.
"The enemies of Islam are waging a media war on the Islamic State that is no less dangerous than the military campaign," it said in the video footage.
It singled out religious channels funded by Saudi Arabia and also showed the logos of al-Jazeera and Orient TV, as well as the Egyptian religious channel al-Nas.
The video ended with a scene showing people stamping on satellite dishes to destroy them.
It did not say whether it would try to enforce its appeal in the territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.
The ultra-hardline Sunni group issued its call as military pressure increased against it with offensives targeting its strongholds in Raqqa, Syria and in Falluja.
ISIS militants are holding several hundred families as human shields in the Iraqi city of Fallujah while government forces close in. Some 3700 people have fled Fallujah, west of Baghdad, over the past week since the Iraqi army began its offensive on the city controlled by militants.
On Monday, the Iraqi army stormed to the southern edge of Falluja under US air support and captured a police station inside the city limits, launching a direct assault to retake one of the main strongholds of militants.
Falluja is Islamic State’s closest bastion to Baghdad, and believed to be the base from which the group has plotted an escalating campaign of suicide bombings against Shi’ite civilians and government targets inside the capital.
Falluja is the second-largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants, after Mosul. It would be the third major city in Iraq recaptured by the government after Tikrit and Ramadi.
Islamic State declared a caliphate over the territory of Syria and Iraq in 2014.
