2 Killed at U.S. Sudan Embassy as Islamists Storm German, British Missions
A second protester was found dead outside the U.S. embassy in Sudan on Friday, his clothing soaked in blood, an Agence France Presse journalist said after a demonstrator was killed earlier when he was hit by a police vehicle.
The body was found at the foot of the compound's outer wall, but it was not immediately clear how he had died, the reporter said.
He said there were burning tires in the road to the embassy, while some trees alongside had also been set alight by protesters angered by an anti-Islam film made in the United States.
As the demonstrators began slowly to disperse, members of the security forces continued to target small groups of protesters with tear gas, the reporter said.
Around 5,000 protesters also stormed the embassies of Britain and Germany, which was torched and badly damaged, an AFP reporter said.
Police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters as several of them scaled the roof of the German embassy and others attacked its facade and tore down the flag to replace it with a black Islamist one, the reporter said.
The mob, furious over an anti-Islam film produced in the United States that has triggered similar violence in other parts of the Arab world, then set fire to the building.
They blocked the road to prevent the arrival of firefighters, prompting the security forces to fire more tear gas.
Eventually the firefighters were able to reach the building and began to extinguish the blaze, as the protesters then headed towards the American embassy, the AFP reporter said.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said staff at Berlin's mission were safe.
"The German embassy in Khartoum is currently the target of attacks by violent demonstrators. The embassy staff are safe. The crisis cell at the foreign ministry (in Berlin) is meeting and is in contact with the embassy," he said in a statement.
Westerwelle said the Sudanese ambassador to Germany had been summoned to his ministry on Friday and "unequivocally reminded of his government's duty to protect diplomatic missions."
Demonstrators also attacked the British embassy nearby, as the Foreign Office in London said it was monitoring the situation.
"We can confirm an ongoing demonstration outside the British embassy in Khartoum, and Sudanese police are at the scene," a Foreign Office spokesman told AFP.
Protests over a trailer for the anti-Islam film on YouTube first broke out Tuesday in Egypt and Libya, where the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came under attack by an armed mob which killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
The protests have since spread across other Arab and Muslim countries.
The low-budget movie "Innocence of Muslims," in which actors have strong American accents, portrays Muslims as immoral and gratuitously violent.
It pokes fun at the Prophet Mohammed and touches on themes of pedophilia and homosexuality, while showing him sleeping with women, talking about killing children and referring to a donkey as "the first Muslim animal."
It was not immediately clear why the German embassy in Khartoum was attacked, although Islamists frequently deplore the country's military role in Afghanistan.
Chancellor Angela Merkel also inflamed tempers in September 2010 when she spoke out in defense of a Danish cartoonist whose drawing of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb for a turban, first published in 2005, earned him death threats, as he was given an award in Germany.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://mobile.naharnet.com/stories/en/53570 |