Widespread protests against U.S. over anti-Muslim film
Palestinian protesters burn a U.S. flag during a demonstration against an anti-Muslim film, in Gaza City, Friday, Sept. 14, 2012. Widespread anger across the Muslim world was expressed about a film produced in the U.S. which ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad. / AP Photo/Hatem Moussa
Last Updated 5:22 p.m. ET
(CBS/AP) Angry demonstrations against an anti-Islamic film shot in the United States spread to their widest extent yet around the Middle East and other Muslim countries Friday, as protesters smashed into the German Embassy in the Sudanese capital, stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Tunisia's capital, and set fire to a nearby American school.
Security forces in Egypt and Yemen also fired tear gas and clashed with protesters to keep them away from U.S. Embassies. Other smaller protests erupted all over the Middle East, from Gaza City to Pakistan, after weekly Friday Muslim prayers. At least 4 people throughout the region were killed in the chaos.
Two protesters died and at least 29 were injured in clashes with police at the embassy in Tunisia, according to the country's official news agency. Another protester was killed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli after a crowd set fire to a KFC and Arby's restaurant. At least 25 were wounded in Tripoli, 18 of them police.
Dozens storm, breach wall of U.S. Embassy in Tunisia
And a 20-year-old Egyptian protester died from wounds sustained by rubber bullets during clashes in Cairo, a morgue official said.
Media reports say as many as four people were killed during clashes in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, but these reports have not been confirmed.
The U.S. sent three separate 50-man Marine anti-terrorist teams to Libya and Yemen to quell the violence, reports CBS national security correspondent David Martin. CBS News also confirmed that Marines were sent to Sudan. Another team in Rota, Spain were on six-hour alert of needed.
Friday's wave of protests comes after attacks earlier this week on U.S. Embassies in Cairo and the Yemeni capital Sanaa and on a U.S. consulate in Libya, where the ambassador, two former Navy SEALs and an Air Force veteran were killed.
Official: Libyan insiders may have aided assault
A low-budget, recently released online film that mocks the Muslim prophet Muhammed is at the center of the protests. National security experts note, however, that most of countries experiencing violence - Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen - all rid themselves of decades-long dictatorships in what became known as the Arab Spring last year, pointing to shaky security and unrest that has all but disappeared from the region.
Muslim world protests anti-Islamic film
Anger over blasphemous film
The movie, called "Innocence of Muslims," ridicules the Prophet Muhammad, portraying him as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester.
CBS News
The Muslim Brotherhood had called for more demonstrations today in Cairo, as did authorities in Iran and the Gaza strip. Large protests were expected in Baghdad and Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, as well as Amman, Jordan. Israel was stepping up security in anticipation of demonstrations after Muslim prayers.
However, a statement on the Muslim Brotherhood's Twitter account said that it has called off the large protests Friday and will instead stage a "symbolic" demonstration against the movie in Tahrir Square.
Sudanese policemen try to disperse protesters demonstrating against an amateur film mocking Islam, outside the German embassy in Khartoum, Sept. 14, 2012.
/ ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty ImagesPolice in Cairo have nonetheless prepared, reports correspondent Holly Williams from Cairo. They erected a 10-foot high concrete barrier, blocking the way to the U.S. Embassy. But crowds of young men have clashed with Egyptian police near the embassy for more than 48 hours.
The Egyptian Government knows that these protests are damaging, and they've come at a time when they're trying to rebuild the country after the Arab Spring, and attract foreign investment. However, the government draws its support from conservative Muslims - President Morsi himself belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood - and many of them are still furious about the film made in America that sparked these protests.
And so, said Williams, authorities can't afford to crack down on them too hard.
On Friday Morsi released a statement saying it's up to Muslims - as part of their Islamic duty - to protect embassies and foreign diplomats who are guests in the country. "I call on all to consider this, consider the law, and not attack embassies, consulates, diplomatic missions or Egyptian property that is private or public, " he said.
He denounced the killing of the American ambassador in Libya. "This is something we reject and Islam rejects. To God, the attack on a person to Allah is bigger an attack on the Kaaba," he said, referring to Islam's holiest site in Mecca.
Still, protests broke out in several cities, fanned by clerics.
Leaders of Egypt's Jihad group (a former militant organization) held a conference in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and said anyone involved in "defamation" of the prophet should be killed. They called on Morsi to cut relations with U.S.
"I appeal to President Mohammed Morsi to cut our relations with those monkeys and pigs," said Rifaei Taha, a leading member of the group.
Additional protests were reported in Nigeria; Jalalabad, Afghanistan; Indonesia; Malaysia; Kashmir, India; Islamabad, Pakistan; Bangladesh; Istanbul, Turkey; Lebanon; Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza; Qatar; Kuwait; Bahrain; Jordan; Syria; Iran; and outside the U.S. Embassy in London, where around 120 demonstrators burned American and Israeli flags.
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Several dozen protesters briefly stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Tunisia's capital, throwing stones, setting fire to cars and raising a flag with the Muslim profession of faith written on it.
Outside the embassy, thousands of demonstrators gathered, including stone-throwing protesters who clashed with police, an Associated Press reporter on the scene said. Officers responded with tear gas and gunshots.
The U.S. ambassador to Tunisia retreated to the safe room in the compound.
Protesters also set fire to an American school adjacent to the embassy compound, and firefighters were prevented from approaching by the large crowd. Thick columns of black smoke wafted through the neighborhood. The group that breached the embassy's outer wall was pushed back outside by police and special forces.
Two Navy ships armed with cruise missiles are monitoring the situation off the coast of Libya, CBS News' Martin reports, but for now have not been given any mission other than to hold station and military action is not necessarily imminent.
In Sudan, a prominent sheik on state radio urged protesters to march on the German Embassy to protest alleged anti-Muslim graffiti on mosques in Berlin and then to the U.S. Embassy to protest the film.
"America has long been an enemy to Islam and to Sudan," Sheik Mohammed Jizouly said.
Soon after, several hundred Sudanese stormed into the German Embassy, burning a car parked behind its gates and setting fire to trash cans. Protesters danced and celebrated around the burning barrels as palls of black smoke billowed into the sky.
Police firing tear gas drove the protesters out of the compound. Some then began to demonstrate outside the neighboring British Embassy, shouting slogans, while others left, apparently heading to the American Embassy, which is outside of the capital.
Defense Department officials also confirm reports of an attack on one of the camps of the Multinational Observers & Force in Sinai, CBS News' Martin reports. About 600 American reservists serve there but there were no U.S. casualties, although there are reports of injuries to soldiers of other nations.
Middle East protests
In Iraq thousands of protesters, both Shi'ite and Sunni, marched through the southern port city of Basra on Friday, burning U.S. and Israeli flags.
The demonstration was led by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), one of Iraq's largest and most powerful Shi'ite political parties.
Tribal leaders in Basra said they wanted the U.S. missions shut down, while Sheik Abu Kifah al-Bakhatri also called for a boycott of U.S.-made goods.
In east Jerusalem, Israeli police stopped a crowd of around 400 Palestinians from marching on the U.S. consulate to protest the film. Demonstrators threw bottles and stones at police, who responded by firing stun grenades. Four protesters were arrested.
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They have the right to be offended.
They don't have the right to become violent over it! It's only a stupid film!
-------------------
Their cultures say they DO have that right, and their governments don't interfere.
They aren't here in America, Sam.
These are such awfully close-minded and hateful things to say. There is so much hate everywhere, and so little understanding of each other. Not all Americans are the same, nor are all Muslims. There are good and bad people in each side, and to condemn a whole society for the act of relatively so few is wrong.
How can you say Muslims as a whole make you sick, unless you have spoken with a majority of them? The events that reach American ears are usually negative; there would be little incentive for it to make the news if it wasn't. Yet we judge them by this small sample, and maybe they judge us too by what they hear about us on their news.
Either way, it's not right. And it's especially not right for those Muslims who are also loyal Americans to be hated because of the acts of so few of their people, or hated because of the sorrow/pain/outrage they may feel as a result of the video.
Not another penny should go to any country where such a tragedy has been allowed to happen, if a protest was big enough to be in the news?
Sorry, no more allowance. Paying our enemies billions of dollars in the hope that they will become our friend is a policy that needs to be revisited. After several decades of foreign policy debacles, enough is enough.
It is a smokescreen, people. An excuse. None of the people rioting even saw or heard of the video. This is being used to cover up Obama's total ineptitude and failures.
The truth is that this Administration knew about the attacks in advance, and did nothing. Even after our great Ambassador and three other Americans were murdered, Obama went to Vegas for a fundraiser with Beyonce hours later? And then spent the next day campaigning? And we still haven't heard from our "leader" on any of this?
The blood of these Americans is on Obama and Clinton, as they both knew about this and refused to do anything. 9/11 isn't a tip-off that it's a good time to beef up security? No, they do nothing, even with advance knowledge, and don't give Marines bullets to defend themselves?
VOTE HIM OUT or plan to be a third world country in a year.
By Suzanne Kelly
Concerned about the reaction to an anti-Muslim film that was gaining attention online, the U.S. intelligence community sent a cable to the embassy in Egypt warning of the concern, a U.S. official told CNN. It was sent 48 hours before the protests in Cairo and Benghazi in Libya, the official said.
The cable did not discuss any specific threat, the official said. It warned instead about the existence of the movie being posted on the internet and the fact that it was gaining attention. A seven minute portion of the movie aired on an Egyptian TV talk show the weekend before the protests started, according to a Department of Homeland Security/Federal Bureau of Intelligence memo obtained by CNN on Thursday.
The cable was not sent to the embassy in Tripoli, Libya or the consulate in Benghazi. US officials have said there was no intelligence ahead of the attack in Benghazi, which intelligence officials still believe was not planned. The White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday there was no "actionable intelligence" indicating an attack was being planned.