WarSclerotic

Thousands of Muslims protested in Yemen, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on Thursday against a film they consider blasphemous to Islam.

In Yemen, thousands of demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa in protest. Security guards tried to hold them off by firing into the air.

The attack followed Tuesday night’s storming of the United States Consulate in Benghazi, where the ambassador and three other staff were killed. President Barack Obama said the perpetrators would be tracked down and ordered two destroyers to the Libyan coast, but there were fears protests would spread to other countries in the Muslim world.

Witnesses in Sanaa said the demonstrators smashed windows of the security offices outside the embassy before breaking through the main gate of the heavily fortified compound in eastern Sanaa. Security guards opened fire.

Once inside the compound, they brought down the U.S. flag and burned it.
Film on Al-Jazeera television showed demonstrators jumping up and down on the parapet of the building and scaling the walls.

The protests were triggered by an obscure video made in the United States that portrayed the Prophet Mohammad in insulting terms.

Yemen is home to al-Qaida’s most active branch and the United States is the main foreign supporter of the Yemeni government’s counterterrorism campaign.

The government on Tuesday announced that al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader in Yemen was killed in an apparent U.S.-airstrike, a major blow to the terror network.

Earlier on Thursday, At least 13 people were injured Thursday in clashes outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo between Egyptian security forces and demonstrators angered by a video defaming Islam.

Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters after they threw stones and petrol bombs near the embassy, state television reported.

The demonstrators set a police van on fire and blocked a road leading to the embassy near Tahrir Square in central Cairo, according to the report.

Protesters had scaled the walls of the fortified embassy building on Tuesday and replaced the US flag with a black banner popular with radical Islamists.
The demonstrators are demanding an official U.S. apology over the video, which has sparked outrage in other Muslim countries.

U.S. President Barack Obama called on the leaders of Libya and Egypt to ensure the safety of US diplomatic facilities and personnel, the White House said Thursday, after four Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Obama “underscored the importance of Egypt following through on its commitment to cooperate with the United States in securing US diplomatic facilities and personnel,” the White House statement said.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s chief prosecutor, Abdul-Maguid Mahmoud, has placed US pastor Terry Jones and 10 Coptic Christians staying in the United States on a watch list at the country’s border checkpoints in connection with their reported involvement in producing the “blasphemous” video, state media reported Thursday.

Jones, the obscure leader of a little-known church in Florida, has periodically provoked outrage in the Muslim world by burning or threatening to burn the Koran.

On Tuesday, the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, Jones praised the video, Innocence of Muslims, which he said showed “the destructive ideology of Islam.”

Egypt President Mohamed Morsi said on Thursday that he supported peaceful protests, but that it was wrong to attack people or embassies.

Demonstrators had clambered into the U.S. mission in Cairo, tore down the flag and burnt it on Tuesday. In Libya, gunmen attacked the U.S. consulate, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other diplomats.

“Expressing opinion, freedom to protest and announcing positions is guaranteed but without assaulting private or public property, diplomatic missions or embassies,” Morsi said in a televised statement. He pledged to protect foreigners and condemned the killing of the U.S. envoy in Libya.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa on Thursday in protest of the film, witnesses said.

They said the demonstrators smashed windows of the security offices outside the embassy before breaking through the main gate of the heavily fortified compound in eastern Sanaa.

Security guards opened fire and there were reports of casualties on both sides but no details were immediately available.

Dozens of people were protesting in Gaza City on Thursday at an anti-Islam film that has sparked violence in Egypt and Libya.

Witnesses said the protesters burnt US and Israeli flags and chanted, “Death to America! Death to Israel!”

They also burnt black-and-white pictures of a person believed to be the producer of the film. Some young men waved black flags of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a radical armed faction active in Gaza.

The protest was in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood, which houses the headquarters of international organizations such as UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Health Organization.

International organizations shut their offices for one day as a precautionary measure.

The United States has no representation in Gaza. It has a consulate in East Jerusalem.