US consulate employee killed in Libya attack

Angry demonstrations take place in Benghazi and Egypt's capital over amateur film deemed offensive to Prophet Muhammad. An American staff member of the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi has died following fierce clashes at the compound, Libyan security sources said. An armed mob attacked and set fire to the building in what they say was a protest against an amateur film deemed offensive to Islam's Prophet Muhammad, after similar protests in Egypt's capital. "One American staff member has died and a number have been injured in the clashes," Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya's Supreme Security Committee, said on Wednesday, adding that rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the building from a nearby farm. "There are fierce clashes between the Libyan army and an armed militia outside the US consulate," he said. He also said roads had been closed off and security forces were surrounding the building. Just hours earlier on Tuesday, thousands of Egyptian demonstrators apparently angry over the same film - a video produced by expatriate members of Egypt's Coptic community resident in the US - tore down the Stars and Stripes at the US embassy in Cairo and replaced it with a black Islamic flag. The two incidents came on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, in a statement, condemned the attack in Benghazi. "We can confirm that our office in Benghazi, Libya, has been attacked by a group of militants ... We condemn in strongest terms this attack on our diplomatic mission." Al Jazeera's John Terrett, reporting from Washington, said the State Department had not yet confirmed the death of the consulate employee in Benghazi, but the State Department said it was still securing the consulate area with the help of Libyan security forces. Suleiman El-Dressi, Al Jazeera's producer in Benghazi, said, "A group of people calling themselves the 'Islamic law supporters' heard the news that there will be an American movie insulting the Prophet." "One they heard this, they came out of their military garrison and went into the streets calling upon people to gather and go ahead to attack the American consulate in Benghazi. Cairo incident In the day's first such incident, nearly 3,000 demonstrators, most of them Islamist supporters of the Salafist movement or football fans, gathered at the US embassy in Cairo in protest against the amateur film. A dozen men scaled the embassy walls and one of them tore down the US flag, replacing it with a black one inscribed with the Muslim profession of faith: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God." Demonstrators also scrawled the first part of the statement - "There is no God but God" - on the walls of the embassy compound. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from outside the US embassy in Cairo, said that the protesters want the film – portions of which can be found online - "out of circulation". "Most of the people I've spoken to here, a lot of them from the ultra-conservative Salafi movement, say that they've seen the trailer to this film and that they're here outside the American embassy to stay until the film is pulled," she said. "There's also a situation with the police, where there are thousands of riot police guarding the American embassy because there of the breach earlier on, when a lot of people stormed into the inner wall of the embassy and put a black flag up." Egyptian police intervened without resorting to force and persuaded the trespassers to come down. The crowd then largely dispersed, leaving just a few hundred protesters outside the US mission. Embassy reaction When asked whether the flag the protesters hoisted an al-Qaeda flag - on the anniversary of the killing of nearly 3,000 people in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania - a US state department official said she thought not. "We had some people breach the wall, take the flag down and replace it. What I heard was that it was replaced with a plain black flag. But I may be not be correct in that," she said. "In Cairo, we can confirm that Egyptian police have now removed the demonstrators who had entered our embassy grounds earlier today," said a senior State Department official, who added that he could not confirm any connection with the incident in Libya. Egyptian activist Wael Ghoneim wrote on his Facebook page that "attacking the US embassy on September 11 and raising flags linked to al-Qaeda will not be understood by the American public as a protest over the film about the prophet. "Instead, it will be received as a celebration of the crime that took place on September 11," he said. Americans on Tuesday marked the 11th anniversary of the September 11, attacks in which nearly thousands were killed when hijacked airliners crashed into the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center, and another was brought down in Pennsylvania. 'Sorry for the embassy' Sam Bacile, an American citizen who said he produced, directed and wrote the two-hour film, said he had not anticipated such a furious reaction. "I feel sorry for the embassy. I am mad," Bacile said. Speaking from a telephone with a California number, he said the film was produced in English and he doesn't know who dubbed it in Arabic. The full film has not been shown yet, he said, and he said he has declined distribution offers for now. "My plan is to make a series of 200 hours" about the same subject, he said. Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-born Christian in the US known for his anti-Islam views, told the AP news agency from Washington that he was promoting the video on his website and on certain TV stations, which he did not identify.   Source: Al Jazeera and agencies