TRIPOLI: Libya on Thursday launched a probe into an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in which the American ambassador died, amid speculation Al-Qaeda rather than a frenzied mob carried out the assault.
The announcement of the inquiry comes as protests against a low-budget, privately produced film denigrating the Prophet Mohammed — the spark of Tuesday’s attack on the Benghazi mission — spread across the Arab world.
“All measures are being taken. An independent judicial committee has been set up to carry out an inquiry,” Abdelmonem al-Horr, spokesman for the interior ministry’s security commission, told AFP.
Asked whether arrests were expected, Horr replied “Obviously,” but did not elaborate.
Tuesday’s assault on the consulate was initially believed to have been motivated by outrage over an amateur Internet film made in America that insulted Islam, but US officials later said it might have been a planned, pre-meditated assault by Al-Qaeda affiliates or sympathisers.
It began when a mob stormed the consulate but later, according to witnesses, armed hardliners aimed rocket-propelled grenades at the complex before setting it alight, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Horr said the inquiry will be “very complicated” because the crowd outside the consulate had been very mixed.
“There were extremists, ordinary citizens, women, children and criminals,” he said.
“There were also shots fired from a nearby farm. We need time to determine who was responsible.”
Libya has apologised to Washington over the attack, which was discussed in a telephone conversation between US President Barack Obama and Mohamed al-Megaryef, president of Libya’s highest political authority the General National Congress.
US officials said Obama thanked Megaryef for expressing condolences while also urging Libya to work with US authorities to bring those behind the attack to justice.
“He also expressed appreciation for the cooperation we have received from the Libyan government and people in responding to this outrageous attack, and said that the Libyan government must continue to work with us to assure the security of our personnel,” a White House statement said.
 “The President made it clear that we must work together to do whatever is necessary to identify the perpetrators of this attack and bring them to justice.”
US officials said a detachment of 50 Marines had been dispatched to secure the main American embassy in the capital Tripoli, where staff numbers were being cut to emergency levels.
Washington also began evacuating all its staff from its mission in Benghazi while at the same time sending two destroyers to “the vicinity of Libya” as a precautionary measure, a senior US official said.
“Make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people,” Obama said in a Washington address, while ordering increased security at US diplomatic missions around the world.
The assault on the US consulate in Benghazi followed a violent protest at the American embassy in Cairo over an amateurish anti-Islamic film made in the United States and reportedly promoted by a group of US-based Egyptian Copts.
Initial reports said Stevens and the three other Americans were killed by an angry mob as they tried to flee in a car.
But it is now believed Stevens died from smoke inhalation after becoming trapped in the compound when suspected Islamic militants fired on the building with rocket-propelled grenades and set it ablaze.
US officials are investigating the possibility that the assault was a plot by Al-Qaeda affiliates or sympathisers, using the protests as a diversion to carry out a coordinated revenge attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
Fresh protests against the film erupted outside the US embassy in Cairo on Thursday, where stone- and bottle-throwing demonstrators were met by riot police firing tear gas.
The health ministry said 13 people were injured during sporadic clashes through the night outside the embassy, where on Tuesday thousands of protesters tore down the Stars and Stripes and replaced it with a black Islamic flag.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement through which President Mohamed Morsi rose to power, has called for protests over the film outside mosques across Egypt after Friday prayers.
In Yemen, protesters stormed the American embassy complex in Sanaa before being driven out by police, an AFP reporter said.
And in Tehran, up to 500 people protested over the film chanting “Death to America!” and to the movie’s director, an AFP photographer said.
Similar protests were staged on Wednesday outside US missions in Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia. In Tunis, police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd.
Mystery deepened over the film that sparked the protests, with conflicting accounts from backers and promoters but no one owning up to having actually directed it.
US media initially cited someone claiming to be an American-Israeli calling himself Sam Bacile as saying he made the film on a $5 million budget with the help of 100 Jews, but no record of such a person has been found.
Coptic Christians have been accused of promoting an Arabic adapted version of the English-language film in Egypt, where clips were shown on an Egyptian television station at the weekend, apparently sparking the protests.
Expert Joshua Landis said the Benghazi attack underlined the “extent to which there are militant groups in most of these Arab Spring countries which are going to be looking for ways to exploit the new political Wild East situation.”
“And that’s going make presidents think two or three times before they jump on board the liberty bandwagon,” Landis, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told AFP.
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