The Mess We Left Behind in Libya

While Washington is busy fighting over a report, Benghazi is descending into chaos. 

Πηγή: Foreign Policy
BY MARY FITZGERALD, UMAR KHAN
Dec 19 2012


BENGHAZI - While heads are rolling in Washington over a damning independent report that found the U.S. State Department's security planning to be "grossly inadequate," tensions in Libya's second largest city continue to rise. On Sunday, gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a police compound in the city, killing one officer and sparking a firefight that resulted in the deaths of three others who had rushed to the scene. Images of a patrol vehicle's blood-splattered interior rippled across Libyan TV channels and social media. Not for the first time, Benghazians wondered what had become of the city they proudly describe as the wellspring of Libya's revolution.

More than three months after the storming of the U.S. mission, and with the Libyan investigation into the attack that killed Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans all but ground to a halt, Benghazi remains jittery and tense. Even in affluent neighborhoods, gunfire and explosions form an almost nightly soundtrack. Many residents are wary about where they venture after dark. The American drones that circle overhead prompt bitter complaints -- as well as the occasional attempt at black humor. "That's my brother-in-law up there keeping an eye on me," one man said with a laugh as he pointed skywards.

But there is little levity when it comes to confronting Benghazi's dense knot of security challenges -- which include rogue militias, frequent assassinations, and a fraught political environment made even more flammable by the ready availability of weapons. "I think the security situation is going from bad to worse after the consulate attack," says Wanis al-Sharif, the top Interior Ministry official in eastern Libya. Why that is depends on whom you ask.

For some, Ansar al-Sharia, the hardline Islamist faction which has rejected accusations it was involved in the U.S. consulate attack, is a popular target. "The Ansar people want to kill everybody who is against their ideology or anyone who was involved with Qaddafi," said one Benghazi resident, as he and a friend debated who may have been behind the weekend attack on the police station.  His companion begged to differ: "No, no, it was the azlaam (Qaddafi loyalists). They want to destroy the reputation of the Islamists and create chaos at the same time." Perhaps unsurprisingly, this sentiment resonates with many of the former rebels -- Islamist and otherwise -- who still call themselves thuwar, or revolutionaries.

Fourteen months after Muammar al-Qaddafi's death, Benghazi finds itself pulled in multiple directions. Not only are there tensions between powerful militias that pride themselves on their revolutionary credentials and remnants of the old order -- pejoratively referred to as taheleb, the Arabic word for algae and a reference to the green color of the Qaddafi era flag -- but cleavages between Islamists and non-Islamists, and supporters and opponents of the region's nascent federalist movement also threaten to tear the city apart.

These dynamics often overlap, but the deadliest tensions spring from the animosity between security officials who served the former regime and those within the ranks of the thuwar, who experienced its brutality first hand. Eastern Libya's constellation of Islamist-leaning militias, several of which are nominally under the authority of the government, contains commanders and rank-and-file fighters that span a broad ideological spectrum. They range from members of the Muslim Brotherhood, to Salafists, to a handful of radicals who cleave to takfiri ideology, which sanctions the killing of Muslims deemed to be insufficiently pious.

What a large number of Benghazi's militiamen have in common, however, is the shared experience of incarceration in Gaddafi's prisons, in particular Abu Salim, the notorious Tripoli jail where political dissidents, most of them Islamists, ended up prior to the uprising.

"I think it is mostly the Islamists behind these killings because the people that have been killed are mostly those who were working in national security while the Islamists were in prison and were being tortured," says Wanis al-Sharif, the Interior Ministry official. "Now the Islamists are out and I think they are carrying out these revenge attacks."

But others see this as something more than the vulgar pursuit of revenge. They see the violence as part of a larger struggle for Libya's soul as the post-Gaddafi state tentatively takes shape. That battle is as much about ideology as anything else: conversations with those who inhabit Benghazi's Islamist milieu invariably turn to the drafting of the country's constitution, a process due to begin next year. "Many of these thuwar still don't trust the government. They are waiting for the constitution. It is very important for them," says Jamal Benour, a judge who acts as justice coordinator for Benghazi.

Most Libyans agree that sharia should be a main source for legislation, but religious hardliners, many of whom are armed, go further and insist it should be the only source of law. For example, a recently posted YouTube video shows a preacher in Benghazi denouncing the new government as secular-leaning, and telling the former revolutionary fighters to hold onto their weapons until sharia holds sway.

But it is precisely those weapons -- and the men that cling to them -- that brought Benghazi to the brink three months ago. Following the attack on the U.S. consulate, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest not just the assault, but also the continuing existence of rebel militias that many see as too accustomed to the power of the gun. Later that night, the compounds of three Islamist brigades -- February 17, Ansar al-Sharia, and Rafallah al-Sahati -- were stormed, with violent clashes occurring at the latter's base.

The militiamen, for their part, are still smarting from these so-called "Save Benghazi" demonstrations. "This was all the evil forces coming together -- federalists, azlaam, and corrupt members of the police and army -- to use the cover of people demonstrating to attack brigades that worked for the revolution and are now actively under the government's control," said Wissam bin Hamid, 35, a commander with an officially-sanctioned umbrella group of militias known as Libya Shield.

Hamid, who used to run a car workshop before the revolution, insisted that he eventually wants to return to his old life. But for now, he argued, forces like his help plug a security gap. His militia helped ensure elections in Benghazi ran smoothly, he said, and his men escorted American officials from their besieged compound during the Sept.11 attack. Later, they provided security for a U.S. investigation team that visited Benghazi.

"Everybody says they want police and army...even we [the former revolutionary fighters] want it. I want it. But we can only return to our old lives once [the police and army] are able to provide security."

Part of the uncertainty in Benghazi stems from the fact that Ashour Shuwail recently replaced Fawzi Abdelali as Libya's interior minister. Many are waiting to see what kind of changes will be ushered in by Shuwail, whose appointment was initially blocked by the so-called Integrity Commission, a body which screens candidates for links to the previous regime. Shuwail, who was head of the Benghazi police force when the revolution began, has considerable support among those who want to see the militias gone. "Now we have a lot of hope since [Shuwail] is one of us," said one man who took part in the "Save Benghazi" rally.

Others are not so sure. "I don't think Shuwail is the right man," Wanis al-Sharif said of his new boss. "The thuwar have openly registered their dislike for the man and I don't think it is healthy to have someone who does not have the backing of all sides especially at this critical stage...But we have big hopes for the program he is going to work on to get security back on the streets."

Shuwail's plan to improve security includes increasing the police presence in Benghazi and other cities and moving all heavy weaponry from urban areas into assigned military bases. He also plans to introduce legislation banning the selling or possession of arms, while allowing for the voluntary handing in of weapons as well as the integration of militia members into the ministries of defense and interior.

But as Shuwail and the Interior Ministry prepare to impose law and order, there is virtually no talk about the investigation into the attack on the U.S. consulate, which has so far turned up nothing. The independent report issued on Tuesday by the Accountability Review Board may have offered the most detailed account of the attack thus-far, but authorities in Libya have yet to make a single arrest in connection with the attack. Some have fingered Ahmad Abukhattallah, a local militia leader who admitted to being present that night, though he denies taking part in the attack. But even Abukhattallah has yet to be hauled in for questioning, he confirmed to us at the weekend.

Wanis al-Sharif acknowledges that the investigation appears to have drifted. He blames it on the fact Libya has yet to establish proper security forces, let alone a functioning judicial system. "What can you expect from a country with no criminal investigative department?" he says. "It is almost impossible."

Deadly Attack in Libya Was Major Blow to C.I.A. Efforts

Clothes and furniture piled outside the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, after a deadly attack. Among the personnel evacuated were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors.

Πηγή: New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT, HELENE COOPER and MICHAEL SCHMIDT
Sept 23 2012

WASHINGTON — The attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans has dealt the Central Intelligence Agency a major setback in its intelligence-gathering efforts at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.

Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of militant armed groups in and around the city.

“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” said one American official who has served in Libya and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the F.B.I. is still investigating the attack. “We got our eyes poked out.”

The C.I.A.’s surveillance targets in Benghazi and eastern Libya include Ansar al-Sharia, a militia that some have blamed for the attack, as well as suspected members of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Eastern Libya is being buffeted by strong crosscurrents that intelligence operatives are trying to monitor closely. The killing of Mr. Stevens has ignited public anger against the militias, underscored on Friday when thousands of Libyans took to the streets of Benghazi to demand that the groups be disarmed. The makeup of militias varies widely; some are moderate, while others are ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis and still others are loyalists from the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan leader.

“The region’s deeply entrenched Salafi community is undergoing significant upheaval, with debate raging between a current that is amenable to political integration and a more militant strand that opposes democracy,” Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who closely follows Libya and visited there recently, wrote in a paper this month,“The Struggle for Security in Eastern Libya.”

American operatives at the mission also assisted State Department contractors and Libyan officials in tracking shoulder-fired missiles taken from the former arsenals of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces; they aided in efforts to secure Libya’s chemical weapons stockpiles; and they helped train Libya’s new intelligence service, officials said.

Senior American officials acknowledged the intelligence setback, but insisted that information was still being collected using a variety of informants on the ground, systems that intercept electronic communications like cellphone conversations and satellite imagery. “The U.S. isn’t close to being blind in Benghazi and eastern Libya,” said an American official.

Spokesmen for the C.I.A., the State Department and the White House declined to comment on the matter on Sunday.

Within months of the start of Libyan revolution in February 2011, the C.I.A. began building a meaningful but covert presence in Benghazi, a locus of the rebel efforts to oust the government of Colonel Qaddafi.

Though the agency has been cooperating with the new post-Qaddafi Libyan intelligence service, the size of the C.I.A.’s presence in Benghazi apparently surprised some Libyan leaders. The deputy prime minister, Mustafa Abushagour, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal last week saying that he learned about some of the delicate American operations in Benghazi only after the attack on the mission, in large part because a surprisingly large number of Americans showed up at the Benghazi airport to be evacuated.

“We have no problem with intelligence sharing or gathering, but our sovereignty is also key,” said Mr. Abushagour.

The attack has raised questions about the adequacy of security preparations at the two American compounds in Benghazi: the American mission, the main diplomatic facility where Mr. Stevens and another American diplomat died of smoke inhalation after an initial attack, and an annex a half-mile away that encompassed four buildings inside a low-walled compound.

From these buildings, the C.I.A. personnel carried out their secret missions. The New York Times agreed to withhold locations and details of these operations at the request of Obama administration officials, who said that disclosing such information could jeopardize future sensitive government activities and put at risk American personnel working in similar settings around the world.

In Benghazi, both compounds were temporary homes in a volatile city teeming with militants, and they were never intended to become permanent diplomatic missions with appropriate security features built into them.

Neither was heavily guarded, and the annex was never intended to be a “safe house,” as initial accounts suggested. Two of the mission’s guards — Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, former members of the Navy SEALs — were killed just outside the villa’s front gate. A mortar round struck the roof of the building where the Americans had scrambled for cover.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced last week the creation of a review board to examine the attacks. The board is to be led by a veteran diplomat and former undersecretary of state, Thomas R. Pickering.

The F.B.I. has sent investigators — many from its New York field office — to Benghazi, but they have been hampered by the city’s tenuous security environment and the fact that they arrived more than a day after the attack occurred, according to senior American officials.

Complicating the investigation, the officials said, is that many of the Americans who were evacuated from Benghazi after the attack are now scattered across Europe and the United States. It is also unclear, one of the officials said, whether there was much forensic evidence that could be extracted from the scene of the attacks.

Investigators and intelligence officials are now focusing on the possibility that the attackers were members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or at least were in communication with the group during the four hours that elapsed between the initial attack at the mission and the second one at the mission’s annex.

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday that there was “a high degree of probability that it is an Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-affiliated group that had a very specific target in mind, and that was to attack the consulate and cause as much harm, chaos and death as possible.”

Foreign diplomats say that under security circumstances like those now in Libya, it is generally standard procedure to have a “safe house” in the vicinity of a main diplomatic facility that can be easily defended and evacuated.

“Normally, you try to keep the location of such a safe house secret, but in Benghazi right now, I think this was next to impossible,” Col. Wolfgang Pusztai, who until early August was Austria’s defense attaché to Libya and visited the country every month, wrote in an e-mail. “There are not too many foreigners hanging around, and it is quite easy to track them.”

After Libya Attack, a Fleeting Sense of Survival

The United States Embassy in Benghazi after the Sept. 11 attack.

Πηγή: New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and SULIMAN ALI ZWAY
Sept 20 2012

WASHINGTON — The survivors of the assault on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, thought they were safe. They had retreated to a villa not far from the main building where the surprise attack had occurred, and a State Department team had arrived to evacuate them. The eruption of violence had ended, and now they were surrounded by friendly Libyan brigades in what seemed to be a dark, uneasy calm.

A colleague’s body lay on the ground. They had no idea where their boss, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, was, nor how in the confusion he had become separated from his bodyguard and left behind.

Then, shortly after 2 a.m. on Sept. 12, just as they were assembling to be taken to the airport, gunfire erupted, followed by the thunderous blasts of falling mortar rounds. Two of the mission’s guards — Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, former members of the Navy SEALs — were killed just outside the villa’s front gate. A mortar round struck the roof of the building where the Americans had scrambled for cover.

The attackers had lain in wait, silently observing as the rescuers, including eight State Department civilians who had just landed at the airport in Benghazi, arrived in large convoys. This second attack was shorter in duration than the first, but more complex and sophisticated. It was an ambush.

“It was really accurate,” Fathi al-Obeidi, commander of special operations for a militia called Libyan Shield, who was there that night, said of the mortar fire. “The people who were shooting at us knew what they were doing.”

They also escaped, apparently uninjured.

Interviews with Libyan witnesses and American officials provide new details on the assault on American diplomatic facilities and the initial moblike attack, set off by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, that transformed into what the Obama administration now, after initial hesitation, describes as a terrorist attack.

The accounts, which remain incomplete and contradictory, are broadly consistent with what is known about the attack, but they still leave many questions unanswered, including the identity of the attackers and how prepared they might have been to strike at an American target.

The attack has raised questions about the adequacy of security preparations at the two American compounds in Benghazi. Both were temporary homes in a dangerous, insecure city, and they were never intended to become permanent diplomatic missions with appropriate security features built into them.

Neither was heavily guarded, and the second house was never intended to be a “safe house,” as initial accounts suggested. At no point were the Marines or other American military personnel involved, contrary to news reports early on.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Thursday the creation of a review board led by a veteran diplomat and former under secretary of state, Thomas R. Pickering. She also briefed lawmakers behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. But the State Department now faces Congressional demands for an independent investigation of the attacks and any security failures that might have added to the death toll.

“In my judgment, which is informed by numerous briefings and discussions with experts, the attack in Benghazi was not a black swan,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said at a hearing on Wednesday, “but rather an attack that should have been anticipated, based on the previous attacks against Western targets, the proliferation of dangerous weapons in Libya, the presence of Al Qaeda in that country and the overall threat environment.”

Investigators and intelligence officials are now focusing on the possibility that the attackers were affiliated with, or possibly members of, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — a branch that originated in Algeria — or at least in communication with it before or during the initial attack at the mission and the second one at the mission’s annex, a half-mile away.

One extremist now under scrutiny is a former detainee at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamouda, a Libyan who is a prominent member of an extremist group called Ansar al-Sharia, which some have blamed for the attack. “It is safe to assume that any significant extremist in eastern Libya is going to be under a lot of scrutiny right now,” an American intelligence official said, adding that it was premature to draw any conclusions.

The most significant inconsistency between Libyan and American accounts is whether the attack that night began with a small protest over the trailer of “The Innocence of Muslims,” parts of which were broadcast on Egyptian television. American officials insist there was a protest that began peacefully, only to be hijacked by armed militants. But Libyan witnesses, including two guards at the building, say the area around the compound was quiet until the attackers arrived, firing their weapons and storming the compound from three sides, beginning at 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 11. A witness said that some of those attacking referred to the film’s insults to Islam.

Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that the authorities believe “this was an opportunistic attack” that “evolved and escalated over several hours.”

What is clear, however, is that those who arrived at the mission — not officially a consulate, though Libyans call it that informally — came intending to inflict maximum damage on the building. They quickly overwhelmed a small security detail that included three guards from a force called the 17th of February Brigade and five Libyans employed by a British security company called Blue Mountain.

In a detail not previously disclosed, after storming the compound, the attackers poured diesel fuel around the exterior of the building where Mr. Stevens; a computer technician, Sean Smith; and a security officer had settled in for the night and ignited it. It is not clear if they knew anyone was inside.

By that time, according to officials, the three had moved into a part of the building designated as a “safe haven,” with fortified doors and no external exposure. The dense, billowing smoke from the fire, however, forced them to leave the haven and head for an exit. It was at that time that they became separated. The security guard, who has not been identified, made it out of the house, but Mr. Smith and Mr. Stevens did not. Both died of asphyxiation from the smoke.

The guard, now joined by others, found Mr. Smith’s body, but not the ambassador’s. By 11:20 p.m., nearly two hours after the shooting started, they retreated to the mission’s second compound, or annex, which had been rented after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government last year to provide additional space for a diplomatic team that now included roughly two dozen Americans in all.

It was only after they left that the fighting subsided and a crowd wandering through the compound discovered Mr. Stevens’s body and removed it through an exterior window, suggesting that he had left the designated haven inside but failed to find an exit. His body was taken to the hospital in Benghazi, where a doctor tried but failed to resuscitate him. The area around the hospital was under the control of a militia suspected of having extremist sympathies, and a video of Mr. Stevens’s corpse in the hospital’s morgue ultimately circulated to an extremist Web site, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a monitoring agency that tracks militants’ Internet postings.

By then, the State Department’s operations center, now aware of the attack in progress, set in motion a contingency plan drafted for emergencies. A civilian airliner contracted by the department and on standby at Tripoli’s airport flew to Benghazi, arriving at 1:30 a.m. with the eight additional security officers.

Mr. Obeidi, the commander with the Libya Shield brigade, was ordered to meet them at the airport, take them to the mission’s annex and escort them back to the airport to be evacuated. Mr. Obeidi expected to find only a few people inside and was surprised to find the entire staff from Benghazi, more than two dozen people. “They told me that there would only be a few, but I saw a big number,” he said.

When the second attack began, it lasted only five minutes, “but when you are in that situation, it feels like an hour,” he added.

The evacuation to the airport did not begin until dawn, but the plane could not carry everyone. It left behind 11 security officers and three bodies. Mr. Obeidi said that the commander of the local operations center, Mustapha Boshala, then ordered a unit to the hospital to retrieve Mr. Stevens’s body. Two hours later the State Department’s plane returned to carry the last Americans out of Benghazi.

In Tripoli on Thursday, Libya’s new government held a memorial service for the four Americans who died. Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns attended. “If Chris were here this evening,” he said, referring to the ambassador, “I know he would be the first to say that for all the pride and jubilation of the revolution, for all the pain we feel tonight, it is the days ahead which matter most.”

In Libya, Chaos Was Followed by Organized Ambush, Official Says

The United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Thursday. An Interior Ministry official said the United States ambassador was killed in the initial attack.

Πηγή: New York Times
By SULIMAN ALI ZWAY and RICK GLADSTONE
Sept 13 2012

BENGHAZI, Libya — The mayhem here that killed four United States diplomatic personnel, including the ambassador, was actually two attacks — the first one spontaneous and the second highly organized and possibly aided by anti-American infiltrators of Libya’s young government, a top Libyan security official said Thursday.

The account by the official, Wanis el-Sharif, given to a few reporters here, was the most detailed yet of the chaotic events on Tuesday in this eastern Libyan city that killed J. Christopher Stevens, the first United States ambassador to be killed on duty in more than 30 years.

The deaths occurred amid a wave of anti-American protests convulsing the Middle East, inspired by an inflammatory anti-Islamic video, “The Innocence of Muslims,” that has spread on the Internet in recent days since it was publicized in Egypt. Protests expanded on Thursday to at least a half-dozen other countries, including Iran.

Mr. Sharif, a deputy interior minister, said Mr. Stevens and a second American diplomat, Sean Smith, were killed in the initial attack, which began as a disorganized but angry demonstration by civilians and militants outside the American Consulate on Tuesday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The protest escalated into an assault by as many as 200 people, some armed with grenades, who set the building on fire.

The second wave, Mr. Sharif said, was hours later, when the consulate staff was being spirited to a safe house a mile away. At that point, a team of Libyan security officials was evacuating them in a convoy guarded by Marines and Libyan security officials who had been flown from Tripoli to retrieve them.

Mr. Sharif said the second attack was a premeditated ambush on the convoy by assailants who were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and apparently knew the route the vehicles were taking. The other two Americans — identified on Thursday as Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, both former members of the Navy SEALs — were killed in that assault. At least 12 Americans and 18 Libyan security officials were wounded, Mr. Sharif said.

“The first part was chaotic and disorganized. The second part was organized and planned,” he said. The ambushers in the second assault, he said, apparently “had infiltrators who were feeding them the information.”

Parts of Mr. Sharif’s account were not consistent with what other Libyan witnesses have said, and his version has not been corroborated by American officials, who have said it remains unclear how and where Mr. Stevens was killed. Many Libyans considered Mr. Stevens a hero for his support of their uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Two Libyans who were wounded while guarding the consulate said that, contrary to Mr. Sharif’s account, there was no indication within the consulate grounds that a mass protest, including members of armed groups, had been brewing outside. The guards spoke on condition of anonymity for their personal safety, and one of them said he realized the dangers only about 9:30 p.m., when protesters crashed through the gate and “started shooting and throwing grenades.” The other guard said that he had been drinking coffee inside the compound just before the attack, and that it was so quiet “there was not even a single ant.”

Mr. Sharif spoke as Libyan officials said at least four people were in custody. The Obama administration, which has vowed to bring the killers to justice, has sent 50 Marines and two warships to Libya, and the F.B.I. has joined the investigation. But it remains unclear precisely what American military firepower can do. If the attackers were not part of a larger international plot, there are no obvious targets for American retaliation.

“These are not the kind of guys with training camps and caravans to hit,” said Michael W. S. Ryan, an expert on Islamic militants at the Jamestown Foundation, a research group in Washington.

The worst of the video-inspired violence on Thursday was in Yemen, where at least five Yemenis were killed as hundreds of protesters stormed the American Embassy in Sana and were repulsed by Yemeni security forces. The embassy’s staff, sensitive to the danger, had been safely evacuated hours before, and Yemeni leaders apologized to President Obama for the mayhem.

The attackers set cars on fire and plundered offices of their equipment, including computers. They also burned an American flag and hoisted their own standard proclaiming fealty to Islam. By nightfall, witnesses said, smoke was still rising from the embassy compound in the eastern part of the capital as a protest raged 400 yards away.

In Egypt, where the anti-American anger began on Tuesday, protesters scuffled with police officers who were firing tear gas, and news agencies reported that as many as 200 people might have been hurt. Demonstrations were also reported outside United States diplomatic missions in Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia — where the police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds — and an anti-American protest was held in Gaza.

In Iran, where nearly all large protests must get government approval, witnesses and news reports said 500 people screaming “Death to America!” converged at the Swiss Embassy, which handles American diplomatic interests, and were restrained by hundreds of police officers.

The authorities in Afghanistan, where deadly violence has repeatedly flared over perceived insults to Islam, scrambled to keep the video, which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a perverted buffoon, from being seen. Afghanistan officials said they pressed to indefinitely suspend access to YouTube, where the video, promoted by a shadowy assortment of right-wing Christians in the United States, had been viewed more than 1.6 million times by Thursday.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Mr. Woods and Mr. Doherty — the two victims identified on Thursday — had served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before going to work as contract security officers for the American diplomatic mission in Libya. Mr. Woods, she said in a statement on Thursday night, was married and had three sons and was a registered nurse and a certified paramedic.

He and Mr. Doherty died “helping protect their colleagues,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton also delivered a strongly worded denunciation of the video in what her spokeswoman later said was an effort to quash the belief in some parts of the Arab world that the United States government had somehow sponsored or condoned it.

“To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible,” Mrs. Clinton said at a briefing with Morocco’s foreign minister. “It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.”

The killings in Libya led to a major political flare-up in the United States on Wednesday, when Mr. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, issued a harsh critique of the president’s handling of the protests and accused him of apologizing for the United States. The administration rejected the accusation, and even some Republicans distanced themselves from Mr. Romney’s criticism as inappropriate under the circumstances.

The Yemen protests came hours after a Muslim cleric, Abdul Majid al-Zindani, urged followers to emulate the protests in Libya and Egypt, residents in Sana said. Mr. Zindani, a onetime mentor to Osama bin Laden, was named a “specially designated global terrorist” by the Treasury Department in 2004.

The crowd in Sana gathered a day after the embassy warned Americans in a posting on its Web site that “in the wake of recent events in Libya and Egypt, there is the possibility of protests in Yemen, and specifically in the vicinity of the U.S. Embassy, in the coming days.”