Egyptian protesters throw stones at riot police during clashes near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Friday.
CAIRO — Anti-American protests inspired by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad entered a fourth straight day here in the Egyptian capital and other demonstrations erupted in the much of the Middle East after Friday Prayer — an occasion often associated with public displays of dissent.Witnesses in Cairo said protests that first flared on Tuesday — the day J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador in Libya, was killed in an attack in neighboring Libya — continued sporadically early Friday, with protesters throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy and the police firing tear gas. In Lebanon, protesters attacked restaurants, while in Sudan the demonstrations flared outside of the German and British embassies. There was also turmoil in Yemen, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq.
State media in Egypt said that more than 220 people had been injured in the clashes since Tuesday.
The widening unrest has challenged the Obama administration’s policy in the tinderbox region where the revolts of the so-called Arab Spring have removed many of the pro-American strongmen who once kept public displays of Islamic passion in check.
In Yemen, baton-wielding security forces backed by water cannons blocked streets near the American Embassy a day after protesters breached the outer security perimeter there and officials said two people were killed in clashes with the police. Still, a group of several dozen protesters gathered near the diplomatic post, carrying placards and shouting slogans.
In Lebanon, hundreds of protesters set alight a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday, witnesses said, chanting against the pope’s visit to the country and shouting anti-American slogans, according to a Reuters report.
Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said in a statement Friday that the country’s embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, was “the target of attacks by demonstrators capable of violence.” According to Mr. Westerwelle, embassy employees were in safety. German missions in Muslim countries had already strengthened security measures in the wake of the recent unrest.
In Sudan, the police fired tear-gas to stop about 5,000 demonstrators storming the German and British embassies in Khartoum to protest against the video, a Reuters witness said in a report by the news agency.
In Iraq, where the heavily-fortified American embassy sits on the banks of the Tigris inside the Green Zone and is out of reach to ordinary Iraqis, thousands protested after Friday prayers, in Sunni and Shiite cities alike.
Raising banners with Islamic slogans and denouncing the United States and Israel, Iraqis called for the expulsion of American diplomats from the country and demanded that the American government apologize for the incendiary film and take legal action against it0s creators.
"We want the U.S. government to prove that there is justice by stopping this movie and punishing the director and his staff," said Sheik Ahmad al-A’ani, a preacher at a mosque in Baghdad.
In Hilla, in the Shiite-dominated south, a witness reported the burning of American and Israeli flags. In Kufa, another Shiite town in the south, a mosque preacher declared his belief that the four Americans killed in the attack in Libya actually died at the hands of the American government to create a pretext for the United States to seek revenge and extend its presence in the region. And in Samarra, a Sunni city north of Baghdad that is near Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, preachers at local mosques demanded that Iraqis boycott American goods.
News reports from Bangladesh said thousands of protesters burned American and Israeli flags as they tried to march on the American Embassy, but hundreds of police officers and other security forces blocked the demonstrators several miles from the building.
In Egypt, in particular, leaders scrambled to repair deep strains with Washington provoked by their initial response to attacks on the American Embassy on Tuesday, tacitly acknowledging that they erred in their response by focusing far more on anti-American domestic opinion than on condemning the violence.
The attacks squeezed President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood between conflicting pressures from Washington and their Islamic constituency at home, a senior Brotherhood official acknowledged. During a 20-minute phone call Wednesday night, Mr. Obama warned Mr. Morsi that relations would be jeopardized if the authorities in Cairo failed to protect American diplomats and stand more firmly against anti-American attacks.
In a letter published in The New York Times, Khairat el-Shater, the deputy president of the Muslim Brotherhood said: “Despite our resentment of the continued appearance of productions like the anti-Muslim film that led to the current violence, we do not hold the American government or its citizens responsible for acts of the few that abuse the laws protecting freedom of expression.”
“In a new democratic Egypt, Egyptians earned the right to voice their anger over such issues, and they expect their government to uphold and protect their right to do so. However, they should do so peacefully and within the bounds of the law.”
“The breach of the United States Embassy premises by Egyptian protesters is illegal under international law. The failure of the protecting police force has to be investigated,” the letter said. It was displayed prominently on the English-language Web page of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood said in an online message Friday morning that it was “canceling” its call for a nationwide protest against the offensive video and would bring only a “symbolic” demonstration to Tahrir Square. The cancellation was the latest sign of its rush to distance itself from the violence and vandalism against American embassies by outraged Muslims after the initial reticence of the group and its ally, Mr. Morsi, triggered a backlash from Washington. Earlier in the week the group had applauded the protests outside the embassy and promised a larger demonstration after noon prayers on Friday, but by Thursday the group had already revised that to encouraging only smaller demonstrations outside individual mosques — which was all but inevitable in any event — even before it withdrew the call altogether.
In broad areas of the Islamic world, news reports on Friday said, the authorities faced similar dilemmas in their response to the amateurish American-video, which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a perverted buffoon and which Muslims have called deeply offensive to their beliefs. In the last two days, the Muslim Brotherhood has stepped up its denunciations of the attacks on the American Embassy, calling them a violation of Islamic teachings urging the protection of strangers and guests.
There were unconfirmed reports late on Thursday that the police had begun using shotguns as well as tear gas in their efforts to disperse the crowd. This week was the first time the police have cracked down on protesters with such violently since Mr. Morsi took office on June 30.
The authorities in Afghanistan, where deadly violence has repeatedly flared over perceived insults to Islam, tried to keep the video from being seen. Afghan 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.
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from London. Nasser Arrabyee contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen; and Timothy Arango from Baghdad. .
