SANAA/CAIRO/BAGHDAD: Demonstrators attacked the US embassies in Yemen and Egypt on Thursday in protest at a film they consider blasphemous to Islam and American warships headed to Libya after the death of the US ambassador there in related violence earlier in the week.

Hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators broke through the main gate of the heavily fortified compound in eastern Sanaa, shouting “We sacrifice ourselves for you, Messenger of God”. Earlier they smashed windows of security offices outside the embassy and burned cars.

“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 bullets. An embassy spokesman said its personnel were reported to be safe.

In Egypt, protesters hurled stones at a police cordon around the US embassy in central Cairo after climbing into the embassy and tearing down the American flag. The state news agency said 13 people were injured in violence which erupted on Wednesday night after protests on Tuesday.

An Iraqi militia that carried out some of the most prominent attacks on foreigners during the Iraq war on Thursday threatened US interests in the country over the film.

“The offence caused to the messenger will put all American interests in danger and we will not forgive them for that,” said Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Asaib al-Haq militia. Protests against the film erupted in Baghdad on Thursday and in the city of Basra, 420 km (260 miles) southeast of the capital.

Hundreds of followers of anti-US Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took to the streets calling on the Iraqi government to close the US embassy.Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki denounced the film as “insulting” and “racist” but called on Muslims not to react with violence.

“The natural response is to refrain from resorting to violence and demonstrate the principles of Islam and its civilised values,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

In Baghdad, hundreds of protesters gathered in Sadr's stronghold of Sadr City, holding up posters of Sadr, burning US flags and chanting, “Death to America”. “How long will we stay in this coma where there is no real sanction?” Sheikh Riyadh al-Waeli, a Sadr aid, told protesters.

“This demonstration is not enough unless there is a real sanction.”The crowd in Basra also numbered in the hundreds and both Sunni and Shia clerics participated in the demonstration, which was organised by Sadr's office.

“We have to fire the U.S ambassador because these things are carried out under U.S supervision and are aimed at offending Islam and Muslims,” protester Yaarab al-Mohammadawi told Reuters.A smaller protest also took place in the city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad.

Gunmen staged a military-style assault on the US consulate and a safe house refuge in Benghazi, eastern Libya on Tuesday. The US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in the assault, carried out with guns, mortars and grenades. Eight Libyans were injured. US President Barack Obama vowed to “bring to justice” those responsible and the US military moved two navy destroyers towards the Libyan coast, in what a US official said was a move to give the administration flexibility for any future action against Libyan targets.

Obama said security was being increased at US diplomatic posts around the globe and on Thursday the US consulate in Berlin was partially evacuated after an employee fell ill on opening a suspicious envelope.

About 1,000 Bangladeshis tried to march on the US embassy in Dhaka after protests earlier in the week outside US missions in Tunisia, Sudan and Morocco.

The US military 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.

The attack, which US officials said may have been planned in advance, came on the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on Sept 11, 2001.

Film

The attackers were part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the Holy Prophet (PBUH). Clips of the “Innocence of Muslims,” had been circulating on the Internet for weeks before the protests erupted.

They show an amateurish production belittling the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

An actress in the California production said the video as it appeared bore no resemblance to the original filming. She had not been aware it was about the Prophet Mohammad.

Among the assailants, Libyans identified units of a heavily armed local Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia, which sympathises with al Qaeda and derides Libya’s US-backed bid for democracy.

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 south of the eastern Libyan town of Darnah.

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 Nov 6 election.

Republican Mitt Romney, Obama’s challenger, criticized the president’s response to the crisis. He said the timing of a statement from the US embassy in Cairo denouncing “efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” made Obama look weak as protesters were attacking US missions.

Obama’s campaign accused Romney of trying to score political points at a time of national tragedy.

Safe house

Stevens, a 52-year-old California-born diplomat who spent a career operating in perilous places, became the first American ambassador killed in an attack since Adolph Dubs, the US envoy toAfghanistan, died in a 1979 kidnapping attempt.

A Libyan doctor pronounced him dead of smoke inhalation. US information technology specialist Sean Smith and two other Americans who have not yet been identified also were killed when a squad of US troops sent by helicopter from Tripoli to rescue the diplomats from the safe house came under mortar attack.

”It was supposed to be a secret place and we were surprised the armed groups knew about it,” Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, commander of a Libyan special operations unit ordered to meet the Americans, said of the safe house.

Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief and Yemeni President Mansour Hadi both apologized 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”.

Many Muslim states focused their condemnation on the film and will be concerned about preventing a repeat of the fallout seen after publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). This touched off riots in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2006 in which at least 50 people died.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the making of the movie a “devilish act” but said he was certain those involved in its production were a very small minority.

The US embassy in Kabul appealed to Afghan leaders for help in “maintaining calm” and Afghanistan ordered theYouTube site shut down so Afghans would not be able to see the film.