US envoy killed in Libya consulate attack

Condemning the killings,President Barack Obama said: “While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others,we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.”

The trailer of the contentious video,an amateurish effort,was uploaded on YouTube by Sam Bacile,identified as a 52-year old Israeli-American real estate developer in California. He told the website he had raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors to make the film. “Islam is a cancer,” Bacile was quoted as saying. The video gained international attention when Florida pastor Terry Jones began promoting it to coincide with September 11.

The attack at the compound in Benghazi was far more deadly than administration officials first announced on Tuesday night,when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said one American had been killed and one injured.

Among those killed was Sean Smith,an information management officer who joined the foreign service 10 years ago. The State Department did not identify the other two,pending notification to their relatives. Smith,who was married and a father of two,previously served in Iraq,Canada and the Netherlands.

The killings could upset Washington’s relations with the new Libyan government that took over after the ouster of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. A veteran of American diplomatic missions in Libya,Stevens had served as an envoy to the Libyan rebels who overthrew Gaddafi last year and was widely admired by them for his support to their struggle.

Obama called Stevens “a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States” who,as ambassador,“supported Libya’s transition to democracy”. “The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe… let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward,” his statement said.

In a message on Twitter,Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagur said he condemned “the cowardly act of attacking the US Consulate and the killing of Stevens and the other diplomats”.

It was not clear where in the city the attack on Stevens took place. An unidentified Libyan official told Reuters that the American Ambassador and the three staff members were killed in Benghazi “when gunmen fired rockets at them”. The Libyan official said the ambassador was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location at the time.

However,Agence France-Presse quoted the Libyan Interior Ministry as saying the four were killed when a mob attacked the Consulate. Al Jazeera’s English-language website said Stevens died of smoke inhalation after a mob set fire to the building.

In Italy,the Corriere della Sera newspaper website showed images of what it said was the American Consulate in Benghazi ablaze with men carrying automatic rifles and waving V-for-victory signs. One photograph showed a man closely resembling Stevens apparently unconscious.

Local Islamist militant groups capitalising on the Libyan security vacuum have claimed responsibility for some attacks,and some reports on Tuesday suggested that one such group,Ansar al-Sharia,had claimed responsibility.

In Cairo,thousands of unarmed protesters gathered outside the embassy during the day. By nightfall,some had climbed over the wall around the compound and destroyed a flag hanging inside and replaced it with one hailing the Prophet. Embassy guards fired into the air,but a large contingent of Egyptian riot police officers on hand to protect the embassy evidently did not use their weapons against the crowd,and the protest continued,largely without violence,into the night.

In a statement on Tuesday,the pastor who drew global attention to the contentious video,Terry Jones,called the film “an American production,not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam”.

Incidentally,Jones had inspired riots in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 by first threatening to burn copies of the Quran and then burning one in his church.

A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood,the sponsor of Egypt’s first elected president Mohamed Morsi,urged the US government to prosecute the “madmen” behind the video. The spokesman also asked for a formal apology from the US.

DAVID D KIRKPATRICK,ALAN COWELL and STEVEN LEE MYERS