Protester dies as anger over anti-Islam film escalates

Angry demonstrations against an anti-Islam film spread to their widest extent yet around the Middle East and other Muslim countries.

Protesters smashed into the German Embassy in the Sudanese capital and set part of it on fire. Others climbed the walls of the US Embassy in Tunis, waving an Islamist banner.

One protester was killed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli in clashes with security forces, after a crowd of protesters set fire to a KFC and an Arby’s restaurant. Protesters hurled stones and glass at police in a furious melee that left 25 people wounded, 18 of them police.

Protests were held in cities from Tunisia to Pakistan after weekly Muslim prayers, where many clerics in their sermons called on congregations to defend their faith, denouncing the obscure movie produced in the US that denigrated the Prophet Muhammad.

The numbers were not huge — and were mostly ultraconservative Islamists — but the mood was often furious. The spread of protests comes after attacks earlier this week on the US embassies in Cairo and the Yemeni capital Sana’a and on a US consulate in Libya, where the ambassador and three other Americans were killed.

After standing aside earlier this week in the face of protesters, security forces in Yemen and Egypt fired tear gas and clashed with protesters to keep them away from US embassies.

Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, went on state TV and urged Muslims to protect foreign diplomatic missions — his first direct public move to contain protests.

“It is required by our religion to protect our guests and their homes and places of work,” he said. He also condemned the killing of the American ambassador in Libya, saying it was unacceptable in Islam.

“To God, attacking a person is bigger than an attack on the Kaaba,” he said, referring to Islam’s holiest site in Mecca.

Morsi’s speech was an apparent attempt to repair strained relations with the US, which was angered by his slow response to Tuesday night’s assault on the embassy in Cairo. Police did nothing to stop protesters from climbing over the embassy walls, and Morsi was largely silent about the breaching for days afterwards.

Ahead of the expected wave of protests US secretary of state Hillary Clinton delivered an explicit denunciation of the anti-Muhammad video.