(PressTV) — A group of female Iranian martial artists have taken legal action against Britain’s Reuters news agency for branding them as assassins, Press TV reports.

Last month, Reuters showed a number of Iranian girls training martial arts in a city near Tehran, claiming Iran was training more than 3,000 female ninjas to kill any possible foreign invaders. The distorted Reuters report was picked up by other British media outlets.

Following the strong reaction of Iranian media to the report, Reuters made changes to parts of the report but refused to apologize for slander.

The Iranian girls, accused by Reuters of being assassins, say the damage has already been done and they are now taking legal action against the agency for defamation of character.

The athletes say the Reuters journalist asked them what they would do if their country came under attack. Reuters used the girl’s patriotic response as an excuse to call them assassins.

“The lady from Reuters asked me only one question which had a very obvious answer. I believe that anyone anywhere in the world would defend his country if it were attacked…but she twisted our words to make us look bad and described us as assassins in the headline of her story,” Khatereh Jalilzadeh told Press TV.