Around 150 people demonstrated outside the French embassy in Baghdad on Thursday against the new publication by the French weekly Charlie Hebdo of cartoons of Mohammed, the prophet of Islam.
Read also: Al Qaeda threatens Charlie Hebdo again for republishing caricatures of Muhammad
To mark the opening on September 2 of the trial in Paris of the jihadist attacks against Charlie Hebdo, police officers and a Jewish supermarket that killed 17 people in the French capital in January 2015, the satirical weekly has put the caricatures of Mohammed back on the front page.
These had made the weekly a target of the jihadists.
Representing the prophet is prohibited in Islam.
On Thursday, dozens of demonstrators including women and children gathered in front of the entrances to the French embassy in the east of the Iraqi capital to protest against the reissue of the cartoons.
"
We denounce the repeated insults of the French media against our prophet
", one reads on a banner.
Equipped with riot shields, members of the Iraqi security forces were deployed in large numbers in front of the embassy entrances, but the demonstration lasted only about 30 minutes and was peaceful.
Two diplomatic missions in Iraq have been the target of attacks in Baghdad in recent days.
On Monday, two Katyusha rockets targeted the United States embassy located in the ultra-secure Green Zone, but the American embassy's air defense system intercepted them, according to security sources.
Hours later, a homemade explosive device targeted a British Embassy vehicle returning from Baghdad airport.