Deadly protests shook the security of American diplomatic missions across the Muslim world Friday, hastening a foreign affairs imbroglio for U.S. officials struggling to contain widespread outrage against a derisive film about the prophet Muhammad.
At least two Tunisians were killed after security forces fired tear gas and bullets into thousands of stone-wielding demonstrators who were attempting to breach the U.S. embassy walls in Tunis, the flashpoint of last year’s Arab Spring unrest.
In Egypt, where the current wave of protests began four days ago, protesters continued to clash with police in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hurling rocks and other makeshift weapons in a ferocious attempt to attack the U.S. embassy. At least one was killed. State news reports noted about 250 Egyptians have been injured since Wednesday.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the “tyranny of mob rule,” and called the violence “senseless” and “totally unacceptable” on Friday, during a ceremony marking the return of the remains of four American diplomats killed late Tuesday in attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Tony Burman: This isn’t a clash of civilizations
On Friday, protests spread rapidly across roughly 20 countries, incited, in part, by calls to arms from Muslim clerics following weekly prayers.
As police quelled the advance toward the embassy in Cairo, Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi spoke on national television for the first time since the protests began — in an apparent gambit to maintain strong relations with the U.S. — urging Muslims around the world to stop the violence.
Indeed, the expanding protests forced the hand of Morsi, who was warned in a phone call from U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday that relations between the two countries would wither if the newly elected Egyptian president did not address the escalating violence in Cairo.
In his televised statement, Morsi said: “It is required by our religion to protect our guests and their homes and places of work. To God, attacking a person is bigger than the attack on the Kaaba,” a Mecca holy site.
Tunisia’s moderate Islamist government also issued a televised statement Friday condemning attacks on the embassy.
The American Cooperative School in Tunis was also vandalized — hours after students and staff had evacuated the building.
“It’s ransacked,” the school’s director, Allan Bredy, told the New York Times. “We were thinking it was something the Tunisia government would keep under control. We had no idea they would allow things to go as wildly as they did.”
Meanwhile, skirmishes between protesters and state authorities outside a KFC and Hardee’s restaurant in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli turned deadly, leaving one dead and 25 wounded, including 18 police.
In Khartoum, Sudanese protesters set trash fires in front of the German embassy before police scattered them with shots of tear gas. Others marched on the British embassy, and an attempt by protesters to storm the U.S. embassy in the Sudanese capital was quashed.
And in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, local police roadblocked roughly 2,000 protesters from a march on the American embassy. The violence there comes a day after President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi apologized to the U.S. for a demonstration in which the embassy was partially destroyed and an American flag was burned.
The U.S. is sending a platoon of Marines to bolster security at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, following similar reinforcements sent to Libya and Yemen, an American official said.
Canadian soldiers were also on the front lines of the spreading outrage as protesters attacked multinational observation posts in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday.
Twenty-eight Canadian peacekeepers are stationed at a base in El Gorah, Egypt, which came under attack by protesters Friday. A spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay said all Canadians were safe and accounted for.
The worldwide eruption marks a volcanic response to a controversial, 14-minute anti-Islam movie. Investigators so far have focused on California’s Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who is currently under U.S. federal investigation for financial crimes and violating probation.
With the U.S. in the thick of a presidential election campaign, Republican nominee Mitt Romney has questioned Obama’s response to the unrest. His vice-presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, added to the attack at a gathering of social conservatives Friday, saying the Obama administration gave mixed signals in response to this week’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya and that the president has alienated America from its allies in the Middle East.
He told the crowd that “amid all these threats and dangers, what we do not see is steady, consistent American leadership.”
But the Republicans’ approach has been criticized by a range of foreign analysts, including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who called it “lame,” “stunning” and “very, very disturbing.”
At the transfer of remains ceremony on Friday, Obama forcefully stated American diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere will not be deterred.
“Even as voices of suspicion and mistrust seek to divide countries and cultures from one another, the United States of America will never retreat from the world,” Obama said. “We will never stop working for the dignity and freedom that every person deserves, whatever their creed, whatever their faith. That’s the essence of American leadership.”
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