---- Violence follows killing of US ambassador
---- US moving Marines, two Navy destroyers toward Libya
"We can see a fire inside the compound and security forces are firing in the air. The demonstrators are fleeing and then charging back," one witness told Reuters. A security source said at least 15 people were wounded, some by gunfire, before the Yemeni government ringed the area with troops. An embassy spokesman said its personnel were safe. In Egypt, protesters hurled stones at a police cordon around the US embassy in central Cairo after climbing into the embassy compound and tearing down the American flag. The state news agency said 13 people were hurt in violence which erupted late on Wednesday, following initial protests on Tuesday.
During a similar protest on Tuesday at the US consulate in Benghazi, Libyan Islamists staged military-style assaults on the mission and a safe house refuge. It was the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in the assaults, carried out with guns, mortars and grenades. Eight Libyans were injured.
President Barack Obama vowed to "bring to justice" those responsible for the attack, which US officials said may have been planned in advance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had nothing to do with the video, which she called "disgusting and reprehensible". The US military moved two destroyers towards the Libyan coast, in what an official said was a move to give the administration flexibility for any future action against Libyan targets.
The US military also dispatched a Marine Corps anti-terrorist team to boost security in Libya, whose leader Muammar Qadhafi was ousted in a US-backed uprising last year. Obama said security was being increased at US diplomatic stations around the globe and on Thursday the US consulate in Berlin was partially evacuated after an employee fell ill on opening a suspicious envelope. Bangladeshis tried to march on the US embassy in Dhaka and Iranian students protested in Tehran outside the Swiss embassy, which looks after US interests because Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations. Earlier in the week, there were protests at US missions in Tunisia, Sudan and Morocco.
FILM Clinton said Washington rejected the film's message absolutely. "It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and provoke rage," she said. Former Libya militant commander Noman Benotman, now president of Britain's Quilliam think-tank, said Western officials were investigating a possible link with a paramilitary training camp about 100 miles (160 km) south of the eastern Libyan town of Derna, near the Egyptian border. US officials said there were suggestions members of al Qaeda's north-Africa based affiliate may have been involved.
Yemen, a key US ally, is home to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), viewed by Washington as the most dangerous branch of the militant network established by Osama bin Laden. The attacks could alter US attitudes towards the revolutions that toppled secularist authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and brought Islamists to power.
The violence also could have an impact on the closely contested US presidential race ahead of the November 6 election. Republican Mitt Romney, Obama's challenger, criticised the government's response to the crisis, saying it was disgraceful to be seen to be apologising for American values of free speech.
Obama's campaign accused Romney of trying to score political points at a time of national tragedy. The attack raised questions about the future US diplomatic presence in Libya, relations between Washington and Tripoli, and the unstable security situation after Gaddafi's overthrow.
Some see such aggressive religiosity as a tactic by hard-line Islamist groups keen to mark out their differences from more mainstream Muslim leaders who have risen to positions of power.
SAFE HOUSE Stevens, 52, had spent a career operating in perilous places, mostly in the Arab world and became the first American ambassador killed in an attack since Adolph Dubs, the US envoy to Afghanistan, died in a 1979 kidnapping attempt. A Libyan doctor at a Benghazi hospital pronounced him dead of smoke inhalation and US information technology specialist Sean Smith also died. Two other Americans were killed when a squad of US troops sent by helicopter from Tripoli to rescue diplomats from the safe house came under mortar attack.
Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief and Yemeni President Mansour Hadi both apologised to the United States over the attacks and Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi condemned them on television while also rejecting any "insult to the Prophet". Russian President Vladimir Putin, a sharp critic of last year's Western military intervention in Libya and of Western backing for Syria's rebels, condemned the violence and called on new Arab governments to take responsibility for containing it.