Anti-U.S. protests spread through Muslim world

CAIRO — From Tunis to Cairo to Jakarta, Indonesia, the Muslim world erupted in protests aimed at the United States on Friday as anger over a video that mocks the prophet Muhammad boiled over into assaults on embassies or demonstrations in nearly two dozen countries.

As governments struggled to contain a wave of fury in which U.S. embassy compounds in Sudan and Tunisia were broken into and others were targeted, the violence appeared to overwhelm whatever goodwill was built up during the Arab Spring, when the United States tried to support many countries’ efforts toward democracy and freedom.

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American outposts in the Middle East are watching for new demonstrations over a movie that ridicules the prophet Muhammad. Protests have occurred in at least 10 nations since the first disturbances on Tuesday at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.

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Muslim protests around the world

On Friday, it was the freedom to target American-linked buildings that most defined the day, as many governments appeared to be taken by surprise at the strength of the protests. Not even KFC and Hardee’s were safe, with franchises in Tripoli, Lebanon, torched by protesters as security forces opened fire on them, killing at least one person.

It was impossible to know how many of the thousands of demonstrators who filled streets outside U.S. outposts were motivated by reports about the video — which was made under mysterious circumstances, apparently by individuals in California — and how many were venting anger at the United States for other reasons. A short clip has been available on the Internet for weeks but apparently did not generate much attention until it was subtitled in Arabic and sent to Egyptian journalists.

The vehemence and volatile nature of the protests in capital after capital — images of which were broadcast around the globe almost instantly via blogs, social media networks and cable news stations — were unmistakable.

Anti-U.S. protests spread to Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Britain, East Jerusalem, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, the West Bank and Yemen, according to U.S. officials and news reports, with many protesters chanting religious slogans and railing against the denigration of Islam in the obscure low-budget video.

Embassies are targeted

In Tunisia, whose toppling of an autocrat in 2011 set the Arab Spring in motion, an American school was largely destroyed in Tunis, the capital, and protesters set fire to cars inside the U.S. Embassy parking lot. U.S. officials said Tunisian security provided a “very strong presence,” confronting stone-throwing crowds with tear gas and gunfire and pushing demonstrators out of the embassy compound.

In Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, buses full of protesters stormed the German Embassy and set it ablaze, then headed for the U.S. Embassy on the outskirts of the city. Thousands gathered there, and many were trying to climb the embassy walls when police opened fire. At least three protesters were seen motionless on the ground, according to the Associated Press.

In Washington, the White House acknowledged that it had sought to discourage distribution of the video that sparked the protests but insisted that it had made no formal request to the video-sharing Web site YouTube, which is owned by Google. Tommy Vietor, the National Security Council spokesman, said the White House had asked YouTube “to review whether it violates their terms of use.’’ Google said this week that it had blocked access to the video in Egypt and Libya.