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A building housing a Hardee's and a Kentucky Fried Chicken burns Friday in Tripoli, Lebanon, after protesters set it ablaze during anti-Western protests.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
Updated at 11:07 a.m. ET:?Protesters in a number of countries across the Muslim world vented anger against the West on Friday as the controversy over an anti-Islamic film raged, with a KFC restaurant torched in Lebanon, violent attacks on U.S. embassies in Sudan and Tunis and fierce protests in Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan.
U.S. embassies and consulates are braced for trouble on the Muslim day of prayer, when demonstrations are often held, following the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Triggered by an?obscure, anti-Islam video made in the U.S.?and released on the internet, angry protests by Muslims have been directed primarily at a number of U.S. diplomatic missions this week.
See the latest on this story at BreakingNews.com
NBC News has learned a team of 50 Marines was being sent to Yemen to deal with attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, where tear gas was fired to repel angry crowds on Friday.
In Egypt, people hurled stones at police near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. "God is greatest" and "There is no god but God," one group chanted, as police in riot gear fired tear gas and threw stones back at them in a street leading to the fortified U.S. embassy.
More photos: Protesters clash with cops near US Embassy in Cairo
In Sudan, a Reuters reporter heard gunfire within the U.S. Embassy compound in Khartoum. Tear gas was fires on?about 5,000 demonstrators hurling stones at the German and British embassies, a Reuters witness said.?
Sudan's Foreign Ministry has criticized Germany for allowing a protest last month by right-wing activists carrying caricatures of the prophet and for Chancellor Angela Merkel giving an award in 2010 to a Danish cartoonist whose depictions of the prophet in 2005 triggered protests across the Islamic world.
NBC's Richard Engel reports from Cairo, Egypt, where protesters, outraged over an anti-Islam video, continue to participate in violent demonstrations near the U.S. Embassy.
In Tunisia, protesters jumped over a wall into the compound of the U.S. Embassy in?Tunis and black smoke billowed across the area.
Pope visits Lebanon
In Lebanon, where Pope Benedict arrived Friday for a three-day visit, hundreds of people set alight a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the northern city of Tripoli on Friday, witnesses said.?Locals watching the attack said some people were shouting, "We don't want the pope" and "No more insults (to Islam)."
At least one person was killed and 25 others were wounded in those protests, Lebanese officials said.?The pope, who was in Beirut, said the Arab Spring movement that saw several Middle Est dictators ousted and elections held --including in Egypt -- was a positive "cry for freedom" as long as it included religious tolerance.
But he added that it had to include tolerance for other religions. Asked about Christians' fears about rising aggression from Islamist radicals, Benedict said: "Fundamentalism is always a falsification of religion."
Lebanon?s militant Shiite movement Hezbollah hung banners along the airport highway greeting Benedict with a picture of him and texts in Arabic and French saying: "Hezbollah welcomes the pope in the homeland of coexistence."
But nearby, the movement -- which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist group -- put up Arabic-only banners for local consumption with a different message: "Welcome to you in the homeland of resistance."
NBC's Richard Engel in Egypt and NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin in Libya report on what might have triggered recent attacks on American facilities and U.S. history in the Middle East.
Egyptian president tries to quell demonstrations
President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who is Egypt's first freely elected president, is having to strike a delicate balance, protecting the embassy of a major donor while also showing a robust response to a film that angered Islamists.
"What happened a few days ago was a pernicious attempt to insult the Prophet Muhammad. It is something we reject and Egypt stands against. We will not permit that these acts are carried out," said Morsi during a visit to Italy.
"We cannot accept the killing of innocent people nor attacks on embassies. We must defend diplomats and tourists who come to visit our country. Killing people is forbidden ... by our faith," he said
NYT: Egypt leaders caught in the middle in anti-US protests
The Muslim Brotherhood?said on Twitter that it was canceling its call for nationwide protests about the film.
However, it said it would still?be present in Cairo?s central Tahrir Square "for a symbolic protest against the movie." The Brotherhood had earlier called for a?"million-man march" of protest in the capital.
At least 224 people were injured in protests outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Thursday,?the BBC reported.
President Barack Obama, facing a new foreign policy crisis less than two months before seeking re-election, has vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the Libya attack.
Four people have so far been arrested over that incident, Libyan authorities said.
A security source told NBC News on Friday that a 48-hour no-fly zone had been imposed over Benghazi in the wake of the consulate attack. The restrictions were believed to be put in place late Thursday night or early Friday local time.
Why films and cartoons of Muhammad spark violence
Sanaa resident: 'It is a dangerous situation'
Security forces in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa,?where anti-U.S. protesters attacked the guard offices outside the main embassy building on Thursday,?fired warning shots and used water cannons on Friday against hundreds of protesters near the U.S. embassy.
"Today is your last day, ambassador!", and "America is the devil," some placards read.
The embassy told U.S. citizens it expected more protests against the film. "The security situation remains fluid," it said in a statement posted on its website.
No U.S. embassy staff were hurt in Thursday's unrest. Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi?condemned the attack and said Yemen would be launching an investigation.
Man behind anti-Islam movie ID'd as Egypt-born ex-con
Yemen's Hadi and Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief both apologized to the United States over the attacks.
Officials in Libya say they have arrested four suspects in connection to the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in which U.S. ambassador Stevens and three embassy staff were killed. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Tripoli.
Protests spread
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, about 200 protesters vented their anger by chanting "death to Jews!" and "death to America!" in a largely peaceful protest outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
"We came here because we want the U.S. to punish whoever was involved with the film," protester Abdul Jabar Umam said. "They should know that we are willing to die to defend the honor of our Prophet."
Libya arrests 4 suspected in deadly US consulate attack
About 200 demonstrators gathered Friday outside the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and hoisted banners.
In Bangladesh, Islamists tried to march on the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, and Iranian students protested in Tehran. Earlier in the week, there were protests outside U.S. missions in Tunisia, Morocco and Sudan and state-backed Islamic scholars in Sudan have called a mass protest after Friday prayers.
In Nigeria, where radical Islamist sect Boko Haram has killed hundreds this year in an insurgency, the government put police on alert and stepped up security around foreign missions.
Protesters in Afghanistan set fire to an effigy of Obama and burned a U.S. flag after Friday prayers in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday Washington had nothing to do with the crudely made film posted on the Internet, which she called "disgusting and reprehensible."
The amateurish production, entitled the "Innocence of Muslims," and originating in the United States, portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser.
For many Muslims, any depiction of the prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterizations have in the past provoked violent protests across the Muslim world.
U.S. officials sought to distinguish the anti-American protests from the Arab Spring revolutions that ousted long-time strongmen in Egypt, Libya and Yemen; Obama backed those demonstrations.
Ed Giles / Getty Images Contributor
Riot police throw rocks toward protesters during clashes near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and Tahrir Square on Friday.
"We see this now as principally tied to this video and those in the regions who are seeking to exploit it," a senior administration official said, according to The Associated Press.
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed Tuesday during a protest against the film when Islamists armed with guns, mortars and grenades staged military-style assaults on the Benghazi mission.
A Libyan doctor said Stevens died of smoke inhalation. U.S. information technology specialist and Air Force veteran Sean Smith also died at the consulate, while two other Americans were killed when a squad of security personnel sent from Tripoli to rescue diplomats from a safe house came under mortar attack.
Clinton identified the two as Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, former Navy SEALS who died trying to protect their colleagues.
Two killed in Libyan consulate attack identified as ex-Navy SEALs
In a statement, she said both Woods and Doherty had lengthy experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. It did not say in what capacity they were working in Benghazi.
In an interview with ABC News last month, Doherty, 42, said he was working with the State Department on an intelligence mission to round up and destroy shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
Actors and the assistant director of the film "Innocence of Muslims" told NBC News that the original spoken lines in the screenplay were dubbed over without their knowledge. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.
Thousand of those missiles disappeared in Libya after Moammar Gadhafi's overthrow in a Western-backed uprising last year, prompting concerns they could end up in the hands of al-Qaida militants.
Timeline: Political fallout from the attack on diplomats in Libya
The U.S. military has dispatched two destroyers toward the Libyan coast, in what an official said was a move to give the administration flexibility for any future action. The USS Laboon, was already in position and the other destroyer, the USS McFaul, was at least a day away, a U.S. official said.
The U.S. military also sent a Marine Corps anti-terrorist team to boost security in Libya.
NBC News staff, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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