Protesters storm US Embassy in Yemen

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — (Sept. 13) – Chant­ing “death to Amer­ica,” hun­dreds of pro­test­ers angered by an anti-Islam film stormed the U.S. Embassy com­pound in Yemen’s cap­i­tal and burned the Amer­i­can flag on Thurs­day, the lat­est in a series of attacks on Amer­i­can diplo­matic mis­sions in the Mid­dle East.

Amer­i­can mis­sions have been attacked in three Arab nations — Yemen, Egypt and Libya — that have faced per­sis­tent unrest and are strug­gling to restore law and order after last year’s revolts deposed their author­i­tar­ian regimes.

Pro­test­ers smashed win­dows as they breached the embassy perime­ter and reached the com­pound grounds, although they did not enter the main build­ing hous­ing the offices. Angry young men brought down the U.S. flag in the court­yard, burned it and replaced it with a black ban­ner bear­ing Islam’s dec­la­ra­tion of faith — “There is no God but Allah.”

Yemeni secu­rity forces who rushed to the scene fired in the air and used tear gas to dis­perse the demon­stra­tors, dri­ving them out of the com­pound after about 45 min­utes and seal­ing off the sur­round­ing streets. It was not imme­di­ately clear whether any­one was inside the embassy at the time of the attack.

Demon­stra­tors removed the embassy’s sign on the outer wall, set tires ablaze and pelted the com­pound with rocks.

The Yemeni Embassy in Wash­ing­ton con­demned the attack and vowed to ensure the safety of for­eign diplo­mats and to step up secu­rity mea­sures around their mis­sions in the country.

It was sim­i­lar to an attack on the U.S. Embassy in the Egypt­ian cap­i­tal on Tues­day night. A mob of Libyans also attacked the U.S. con­sulate in the east­ern city of Beng­hazi on Tues­day, killing Amer­i­can Ambas­sador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

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.

The spread­ing vio­lence comes as out­rage grows over a movie called “Inno­cence of Mus­lims” that mocked Islam’s Prophet Muham­mad. The ama­teur­ish video was pro­duced in the U.S. and excerpted on YouTube.

U.S. offi­cials also were inves­ti­gat­ing whether the ram­page in Libya was actu­ally planned to coin­cide with the anniver­sary of the 9/11 ter­ror attacks.

Egypt­ian pro­test­ers clashed Thurs­day with police near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for the third day in a row. Police used tear gas to dis­perse the pro­test­ers and the two sides pelted each other with rocks. But unlike Tues­day, the police kept the pro­test­ers away from the embassy’s compound.

The Inte­rior Min­istry, which is in charge of police, said 16 pro­test­ers and 13 police­men were wounded in the clashes, which broke out overnight and were ongo­ing. Twelve pro­test­ers have been arrested, it said.

Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Mohammed Morsi, speak­ing while on a visit to Brus­sels, vowed on Thurs­day not to allow attacks on for­eign embassies in Cairo, say­ing the Egypt­ian peo­ple reject such “unlaw­ful acts.”

In Iraq on Thurs­day, hun­dreds of Shi­ite fol­low­ers of the anti-American cleric Muq­tada al-Sadr demanded the clo­sure of the U.S. Embassy in Bagh­dad because of the film. Pro­test­ers burned Amer­i­can flags and car­ried ban­ners read­ing, “We reject the attack on the Prophet Muhammad.

“No, no, to Israel! No, no to Amer­ica!” thou­sands shouted in the Shi­ite strong­hold of Sadr City in north­east Bagh­dad. “‘Yes, yes for Mes­sen­ger of God.”

Afghanistan’s gov­ern­ment, mean­while, sought to avert any protests as past anger over per­ceived insults to Islam has trig­gered vio­lence in the country.

Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai can­celed an offi­cial visit to Nor­way and spoke by phone with U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama to con­vey his con­do­lences for the deaths of the U.S. ambas­sador to Libya and three other diplo­mats, a state­ment said. He also dis­cussed the “film and the insult­ing of holy Islamic val­ues,” but the state­ment pro­vided no other details.

Stevens was the first U.S. ambas­sador killed in the line of duty in 30 years.

The movie, “Inno­cence of Mus­lims,” came to atten­tion in Egypt after its trailer was dubbed into Ara­bic and posted on YouTube. The video-sharing web­site blocked access to it Wednes­day. The trailer depicts Muham­mad as a fraud, a wom­an­izer and a mad­man in an overtly ridi­cul­ing way, show­ing him hav­ing sex and call­ing for massacres.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Sep 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.