 Esam Omran Al-Fetori / Reuters Flames engulf the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Tuesday night, By NBC News and wire reports The U.S. ambassador and three other Americans have been killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi by protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. Three named Libyan officials told the AP that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff. The protesters were firing gunshots and rocket-propelled grenades. NBC's Richard Engel, citing a Libyan security source, also reported early Wednesday that the ambassador was among those killed. The State Department has only confirmed one death so far. The three Libyan officials cited by the AP hold senior security positions in Benghazi. They are deputy interior minister for eastern Libya, Wanis al-Sharaf; Benghazi security chief Abdel-Basit Haroun; and Benghazi city council and security official Ahmed Bousinia. Demonstrations also broke out Tuesday in Egypt, where protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and tore and replaced the American flag with an Islamic banner. Tuesday's attacks were the first such assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country, at a time when both Libya and Egypt are struggling to overcome the turmoil following the ouster of their longtime leaders, Moammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak, in uprisings last year. The protests in both countries were sparked by outrage over a film ridiculing Muhammad. It produced by an Israeli filmmaker living in California and was being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim, Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States. Excerpts from the film dubbed into Arabic were posted on YouTube. The 14-minute trailer of the movie, posted on the website in an original English version and another dubbed into Egyptian Arabic, depicts Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres.  Mahmud Turkia / AFP - Getty Images, file John Christopher Stevens, left, was appointed U.S. ambassador to Libya earlier this year. The website's guidelines call for removing videos that include a threat of violence, but not those that only express opinions. YouTube's practice is not to comment on specific videos. Romney slams Obama over attacks on US officials in Libya, Egypt Muslims find it offensive to depict Muhammad in any fashion, much less in an insulting way. The 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper triggered riots in many Muslim countries. Protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and pulled down the American flag during a protest over what they said was a film produced in the United States that insulted the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Richard Engel reports. Clinton condemns attack She confirmed the death of one State Department officer in Benghazi, but it was not immediately clear whether that person was among those whose deaths were reported Wednesday. Clinton expressed concern that the protests might spread to other countries. She said the United States is working with "partner countries around the world to protect our personnel, our missions, and American citizens worldwide." "The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind," Clinton said in a statement released by the State Department. Whatever the cause, the events appeared to underscore how much the ground in the Middle East has shifted for Washington, which for decades had close ties with Arab dictators who could be counted on to muzzle dissent. President Barack Obama's administration in recent weeks had appeared to overcome some of its initial caution following the election of an Islamist Egyptian president, Muhammad Morsi, offering his government desperately needed debt relief and backing for international loans. "The victory in the Libyan elections of nationalist rather than fundamentalist forces, and the rise to power in Egypt of the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood has marginalized the militant strain of Muslim activism…" Juan Cole, a professor of history and a Middle East expert at the University of Michigan, wrote on his blog. "One way the fundamentalist vigilantes can hope to combat their marginalization and political irrelevance in the wake of the Arab Spring is to manufacture a controversy that forces people to side with them. I suspect that is what they were doing in Egypt and Libya, in front of the US embassy in Cairo and at the rump consulate in Benghazi," Cole wrote. In Benghazi Tuesday, a large mob stormed the U.S. consulate, with gunmen firing their weapons, said Wanis al-Sharef, an Interior Ministry official in Benghazi. A witness said attackers fired automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades at the consulate as they clashed with Libyans hired to guard the facility. Outnumbered by the crowd, Libyan security forces did little to stop them, al-Sharef said. The crowd overwhelmed the facility and set fire to it, burning most of it and looting the contents, witnesses said. 'A terrifying day' "I heard nearly 10 explosions and all kinds of weapons. It was a terrifying day," a witness who refused to give his name because he feared retribution told the AP. Hours before the Benghazi attack, hundreds of mainly ultraconservative Islamist protesters in Egypt marched to the U.S. Embassy in downtown Cairo, gathering outside its walls and chanting against the movie and the United States. Most of the embassy staff had left the compound earlier because of warnings of the upcoming demonstration. "Say it, don't fear: Their ambassador must leave," the crowd chanted. Dozens of protesters then scaled the embassy walls, and several went into the courtyard and took down the American flag from a pole. They brought it back to the crowd outside, which tried to burn it, but failing that tore it apart. One protester, Hossam Ahmed, said he was among those who entered the embassy compound and replaced the American flag with the black one. He said the group has now removed the black flag from the pole and laid it instead on a ladder on top of the wall. "This is a very simple reaction to harming our prophet," said another, bearded young protester, Abdel-Hamid Ibrahim. On Tuesday, Egypt's prestigious Al-Azhar mosque and seat of Sunni learning condemned a symbolic "trial" of the Prophet organized by a U.S. group including Terry Jones, a Christian pastor who triggered riots in Afghanistan in 2010 by threatening to burn the Koran. But it was not immediately clear whether it was the event sponsored by Jones, or the video, called "Innocence of Muslims," that prompted the melee at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, and possibly the violence in Libya. Filmmaker intended movie to be provocative Speaking by phone to the AP from an undisclosed location, Bacile, who went into hiding Tuesday, remained defiant, saying Islam is "a cancer" and that he intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion. Bacile said he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world. "Islam is a cancer, period," he repeatedly said in a solemn, accented tone. Bacile said the film was produced in English and he doesn't know who dubbed it in Arabic. The full film has been shown once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year, he said. Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-born Christian in the U.S. known for his anti-Islam views, told the AP from Washington that he was promoting the video on his website and on certain TV stations, which he did not identify. Both depicted the film as showing how Coptic Christians are oppressed in Egypt, though it goes well beyond that to ridicule Muhammad — a reflection of their contention that Islam as a religion is inherently oppressive. For several days, Egyptian media have been reporting on the video, playing some excerpts from it and blaming Sadek for it, with ultraconservative clerics going on air to denounce it. NBC News staff, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. More world stories from NBC News:
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9/12/2012
Report: US ambassador, 3 others killed in Libya
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