Embassies attacked as film protest escalates
In Libya, authorities said they had made four arrests in the investigation into the attack that killed ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama has vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the Benghazi attack, which US officials said may have been planned in advance.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Washington had nothing to do with the film posted online, which she called “disgusting and reprehensible”.
The amateurish production, entitled the Innocence of Muslims, and originating in the US, portrays Mohammed as a womaniser, a homosexual, and a child abuser.
For many Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterisations have in the past provoked violent protests across the Muslim world.
Demonstrations spread further yesterday, with US embassies again the targets of popular anger among Muslims questioning why the US has failed to take action against the makers of the film.
Hundreds of Yemenis broke through the main gate of the heavily fortified US embassy compound in the capital Sanaa, shouting “We sacrifice ourselves for you, Messenger of God.” They smashed windows of security offices outside the embassy and burned cars.
A security source said at least 15 people were wounded, some by gunfire, before the government ringed the area with troops.
In Egypt, protesters hurled stones at a police cordon around the US embassy in central Cairo after climbing into the embassy compound and tearing down the US flag. The state news agency said 13 people were hurt in violence which erupted late on Wednesday, following initial protests on Tuesday.
Around 200 demonstrators gathered outside the US embassy in Kuwait shouting slogans such as “God is great”. They hoisted banners, one of which bread in English: “USA stop the bullshit. Respect us”.
Kuwaiti riot police encircled the crowd of men protesting peacefully in their traditional Kuwaiti dress.
The US consulate in Berlin was partially evacuated after an employee fell ill on opening a suspicious envelope. Bangladeshi Islamists tried to march on the US embassy in Dhaka and Iranian students protested in Tehran.
Earlier in the week, there were protests outside US missions in Tunisia, Morocco, and Sudan.
The US ambassador to Libya was killed during a protest against the film on Tuesday at the consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi when Islamists armed with guns, mortars, and grenades staged military-style assaults on the mission and a safe house refuge.
A doctor at a Benghazi hospital said Stevens died of smoke inhalation. US information technology specialist Sean Smith also died at the consulate, while two others were killed when US troops sent by helicopter from Tripoli to rescue diplomats from the safe house came under mortar attack.
Tuesday’s incident, on what was the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks on the US on Sept 11, 2001, has created an unwanted foreign policy crisis for Obama ahead of his bid for re-election in November.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Colorado yesterday, Obama said he had ordered his administration to do whatever was necessary to protect Americans abroad and that aides had been in contact with other governments “to let them know they’ve got a responsibility to protect our citizens”.
The US military dispatched two destroyers towards the Libyan coast, in what an official said was a move to give the administration flexibility for any future action.
A Marine Corps anti-terrorist team was also deployed to Libya.
Among the assailants in Benghazi, Libyans identified units of a heavily armed local Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia, which sympathises with al Qaeda and derides Libya’s US-backed bid for democracy.
US officials said there were suggestions members of al Qaeda’s North Africa-based affiliate may have been involved.
— Reuters
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