MANILA, Philippines --- Fury about a film that insults the Prophet Mohammad tore across the Middle East after weekly prayers on Friday with protesters attacking US embassies and burning American flags as the Pentagon rushed to bolster security at its missions.
At least seven people were killed as local police struggled to repel assaults after weekly Muslim prayers in Tunisia and Sudan, while there was new violence in Egypt and Yemen and across the Muslim world, driven by emotions ranging from piety to anger at Western power to frustrations with local leaders and poverty.
A Taliban attack on a base in Afghanistan that killed two Americans may also have been timed to coincide with protests.
But three days after the amateurish film of obscure origin triggered an attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans on September 11, President Barack Obama led a ceremony to honor the returning dead and vowed to "stand fast" against the violence.
"The United States will never retreat from the world," said Obama, who in seeking re-election must defend his record on protecting U.S. interests, both at embassies and more widely in a region where last year's Arab Spring revolts overthrew pro-Western autocrats to the benefit of once-oppressed Islamists.
For a third day, television pictures of flames licking around embassy compounds and masked youths exchanging rocks for teargas from riot police were the dominant images of Arab attitudes to Washington. Most diplomatic staff were absent, as most of the region marked the weekend.
But bullets flew. In Tunis, at least two people were killed and 29 were wounded, the government said, after police gunfire near the U.S. embassy in the North African city that was the model for last year's pro-democracy revolutions.
Counting on Washington for economic aid, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki condemned what he called "an attack on the embassy of a friendly nation".
Three died, too, in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, state radio said, while there were also deaths in Cairo and in Lebanon.
As US military drones faced Islamist anti-aircraft fire over Benghazi, about 50 marines landed in Yemen a day after the US embassy there was stormed. For a second day in the capital Sanaa, police battled hundreds of young men around the mission. Washington also sent Marines to reinforce security at its embassy in Sudan.
Egypt's new Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, condemned a third day of stone-throwing and siege around the US embassy in Cairo, a linchpin of US policy in the Middle East.
In Khartoum, wider anger at Western attitudes to Islam also saw the German embassy overrun, with police doing little to stop demonstrators who raised a black Islamist flag. Violence at the US embassy followed protests against both Washington and the Sudanese government, which is broadly at odds with the West.
The wave of indignation and rage over the film, which portrays Mohammad as a womanizer and a fool, coincided with Pope Benedict's arrival in Lebanon for a three-day visit to a region still in the throes of upheaval and with Christian minorities fearful of the rise of political Islam from Egypt to Syria.
The involvement of a prominent Egyptian-American Christian in promoting the film has caused anger and worry among Christian leaders in Egypt, who condemned the film.
In the restive Sinai peninsula, militants attacked an international military observer base close to the Israeli border, a witness and a security source said. Two Colombian soldiers were wounded, an official from the observer force said.
Libya closed its airspace around Benghazi airport for a time because of heavy anti-aircraft fire by Islamists aiming at U.S. reconnaissance drones flying over the city; Obama, who has sent two warships to the Libyan coast this week, has vowed to bring the killers of ambassador Christopher Stevens to justice.
A Libyan official said the spy planes flew over the embassy compound and elsewhere, hunting strongholds of militant groups.
Further west along the Mediterranean, a Reuters reporter saw police open fire to try to quell an assault in which protesters forced their way past police into the US embassy in Tunis.
