Western embassies edgy as Muslim anger at film simmers

Western embassies across the Muslim world remained on high alert and the United States urged vigilance after days of anti-American violence provoked by a video mocking the Prophet Mohammad.

The head of Libya's national assembly said an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans last Tuesday looked like a planned assault by a "group with an agenda" rather than a spontaneous reaction to the video posted online.

With protests against the film continuing from London to Lahore on Sunday, Western diplomatic missions were on edge. Germany followed the US lead and withdrew some staff from its embassy in Sudan, which was stormed on Friday.

Washington ordered non-essential staff and family members to leave its embassy on Saturday after the Khartoum government turned down a US request to send Marines to bolster security.

Non-essential US personnel have also been withdrawn from Tunisia, and Washington urged US citizens to leave the capital Tunis after the embassy there was targeted on Friday.

The protests peaked on Friday and abated over the weekend. Around 350 people chanted slogans at a rally outside the US embassy in London on Sunday. A small group of protesters burned a US flag outside the embassy in the Turkish capital, and in Pakistan there were protests in more than a dozen cities.

One person was killed when unidentified people opened fire at a protest in the southern city of Hyderabad, and five people were injured in clashes with police in Karachi as around 1,000 protesters tried to reach the US consulate, police said.

The head of Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah called for protests in Beirut on Sunday and nationwide later in the week.

"Those responsible for the film, starting with the US, must be held accountable," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said.

"All these developments are being orchestrated by US intelligence."

The violence is the most serious wave of anti-American protests in the Muslim world since the start of the Arab Spring revolts last year. At least nine people were killed in protests in several countries on Friday.

It was fanned by public anger over a video, posted on the Internet under several titles including "Innocence of Muslims", that mocked the Prophet Mohammad and portrayed him as a womaniser and a fool.

The crisis presents US President Barack Obama with a foreign policy headache as November elections approach.

Some U.S. officials have suggested the Benghazi attack was planned by Islamist militants using the video as a pretext, a hypothesis endorsed by Mohammed Magarief, the president of Libya's national assembly.

"Call it whatever you want, al Qaeda or not, what happened was an act by a group with an agenda for revenge. They chose a specific time, technique and certain victims. This is what it was all about," Magarief told Reuters in an interview.

However, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said on Sunday talk shows that preliminary information indicated that the attack was not pre-meditated.

"There's no question, as we've seen in the past with things like 'The Satanic Verses', with the cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad, there have been such things that have sparked outrage and anger and this has been the proximate cause of what we've seen," she said.

Magarief told CBS News that about 50 people had been arrested in connection with the attack. Some were from abroad.