Outraged Muslims storm embassies in Tunisia, Sudan as anti-U.S. protests spread to 20 countries. CAIRO — Angry protests over an anti-Islam film spread across the Muslim world Friday, with demonstrators scaling the walls of U.S. embassies in Tunisia and Sudan, torching part of a German embassy and clashing with police in violence that left at least four dead.
Amid the turmoil, Islamic militants waving black banners and shouting “God is great” stormed an international peacekeepers base in Egypt’s Sinai and battled troops. Meanwhile, the Pentagon rushed to bolster security at its missions across the region. Egypt’s new Islamist president went on national TV and appealed to Muslims to not attack embassies, denouncing the violence earlier this week in Libya that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.
Mohammed Morsi’s first public move to restrain protesters after days of near silence appeared aimed at repairing strains with the United States over this week’s violence. Inside the strange Hollywood scam that spread chaos across the Middle East. Did an inflammatory anti-Muslim film trailer that appeared spontaneously on YouTube prompt the attack that left four US diplomats dead, including US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens?
American officials have suggested that the assault was pre-planned, allegedly by of one of the Jihadist groups that emerged since the Nato-led overthrow of Libya's Gaddafi regime. So even though the deadly scene in Benghazi may not have resulted directly from the angry reaction to the Islamophobic video, the violence has helped realize the apocalyptic visions of the film's backers. Produced and promoted by a strange collection of rightwing Christian evangelicals and exiled Egyptian Copts, the trailer was created with the intention of both destabilizing post-Mubarak Egypt and roiling the US presidential election. As a consultant for the film named Steve Klein said: "We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen. "