Al-Qaeda calls for attacks on US diplomats, embassies
By Nehal El-Sherif, dpa
Cairo (dpa) - Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch urged Muslims around the world to attack US diplomats and missions in response to an anti-Islam video.
Protests against the independent film made in the United States had spread since Tuesday, with hundreds of demonstrators attacking Western embassies in several Muslim countries.
An attack on Tuesday - the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington - against the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, left US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other officials dead.
"Whoever comes across US ambassadors or envoys should follow the example of Omar al-Mokhtar's descendants in Libya, who killed the American ambassador," al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said in a statement posted Saturday on Islamist websites.
The group is regarded as the most active branch of the global al-Qaeda network, comprised mostly of Yemeni and Saudi militants.
The ambassador's death came one day after al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri posted a video on jihadist forums urging Libyans to avenge the killing of the network's second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, in a US drone strike this year in Pakistan.
"Efforts should lead to one goal, which is to expel the embassies of America from Muslim countries. Let the demonstrations continue to set fire in these embassies as our jealous brothers did in Egypt and Yemen," the AQAP statement said.
Al-Qaeda called on Muslims living in the West to attack key targets, and described the internet film as "another chapter in the crusader wars" against Islam.
The amateurish film, titled Innocence of Muslims, portrays the prophet Mohammed as a womanizer and paedophile.
US officials questioned the suspected producer of the film Nakoula Basseley Nakoula early Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Officers arrived at Nakoula's home and took him to a police station for voluntary questioning. The newspaper said he was not arrested or detained.
Violence around US embassies in Muslim countries left at least eight people dead.
Four people were killed in rioting at the US embassy in the Tunisian capital, while two were killed in Cairo before security forces cleared the streets of demonstrators Saturday around the US embassy.
Attacks on Western embassies in the Sudanese capital Khartoum killed at least two people and injured 50 police officers, security officials said.
The US State Department announced Saturday that it was ordering the departure of all non-emergency government personnel from Tunisia and Sudan.
It warned US citizens "against all travel to Tunisia at this time," and warned of the risks of travel to Sudan, where the terrorist threat level "remains critical."
The Bangladeshi government condemned the film Saturday, following demonstrations by several thousand people in the capital of the South Asian Muslim country.
Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al al-Sheikh, denounced attacks on diplomats. He described the film as a "miserable criminal try that will not harm Islam."
"It is forbidden to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, or to attack those granted protection of their lives and property, or to destroy or set fire to public property," he said.
Attacks on the innocent and diplomats "are also a distortion of the Islamic religion and are not accepted by God," he said.
In Iraq, hundreds protested in the southern city of Najaf and burned the US flag.
"We believe that sowing hatred among peoples in this way by the film directors and intelligence bodies standing behind them will ignite sedition that major powers will bear the responsibility to put out," Shiite cleric Sadr al-Din al-Qabbanji said at the protest.
