Demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassies in Yemen and Egypt on Thursday in protest at a film they consider blasphemous to Islam, and American warships headed towards Libya after the U.S. ambassador there was killed in related violence this week.
In Libya, authorities said they had made four arrests in the investigation into the attack that killed ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americas in Benghazi on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama has vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the Benghazi attack, which U.S. officials said may have been planned in advance, possibly by an al Qaeda-linked group.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had nothing to do with the crudely made film posted on the Internet, which she called "disgusting and reprehensible."
The amateurish production, entitled the "Innocence of Muslims," and originating in the United States, portrays Mohammad as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser.
For many Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterizations have in the past provoked violent protests across the Muslim world.
Demonstrations spread further on Thursday, with U.S. embassies again the targets of popular anger among Muslims questioning why the United States has failed to take action against the makers of the film.
Hundreds of Yemenis broke through the main gate of the heavily fortified U.S. 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 U.S. embassy in central Cairo after climbing into the embassy compound and tearing down the American 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 U.S. 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.
On Thursday, the U.S. consulate in Berlin was partially evacuated after an employee fell ill on opening a suspicious envelope. Bangladeshi Islamists tried to march on the U.S. embassy in Dhaka and Iranian students protested in Tehran.
Earlier in the week, there were protests outside U.S. missions in Tunisia, Morocco and Sudan.
The U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed during a protest against the film on Tuesday at the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi when Islamists armed with guns, mortars and grenades staged military-style assaults on the mission and a safe house refuge.
A Libyan doctor at a Benghazi hospital said Stevens died of smoke inhalation. U.S. information technology specialist Sean Smith also died at the consulate, while two other Americans were killed when a squad of U.S. troops sent by helicopter from Tripoli to rescue diplomats from the safe house came under mortar attack.
FIRST U.S. AMBASSADOR KILLED SINCE 1979
Stevens, 52, had spent a career operating in perilous places, mostly in the Arab world, and became the first American ambassador killed in an attack since Adolph Dubs, the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, died in a 1979 kidnapping attempt.
Tuesday's incident, on what was the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, has created an unwanted foreign policy crisis for Obama ahead of his bid for reelection in November.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Colorado on Thursday, 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."
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