WASHINGTON/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – President Barack Obama vowed yesterday to “bring to justice” the Islamist gunmen responsible for a ferocious assault that killed the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans – an attack that may have been organized in advance.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the other Americans died after the gunmen attacked the lightly fortified US consulate and a safe house refuge in Benghazi on Tuesday night. The attackers were part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the Prophet Mohammad.
Obama said he had ordered an increase in security at US diplomatic posts around the globe following the assault.
The US consulate was overrun and torched in a military-style assault, the ambassador left lost and dying alone in the smoke while rescuers ran into a deadly ambush as they sought to save survivors. The attackers used guns, mortars and grenades. US and Libyan officials said the attack may have been planned in advance.
The violence in the eastern city, a cradle of Libya’s US-backed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi last year, came on the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on Sept 11, 2001. Another assault was mounted on the US embassy in Cairo on Tuesday in which protesters, who included Islamists and teenage soccer fans, tore down and burned a US flag.
In Cairo, security forces late yesterday fired tear gas to disperse more stone-throwing demonstrators near the embassy. Live TV showed hundreds of demonstrators at the US embassy.
Stevens, a 52-year-old California-born diplomat who spent a career operating in perilous places, became the first American ambassador killed in an attack since Adolph Dubs, the US envoy to Afghanistan, died in a 1979 kidnapping attempt.
A Libyan doctor pronounced him dead of smoke inhalation. US information technology specialist Sean Smith and two other Americans who have not yet been identified also were killed.
Among the assailants, Libyans identified units of a heavily armed local Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia, which sympathizes with al Qaeda and derides Libya’s US-backed bid for democracy.
US government officials said the Benghazi attack may have been planned in advance, also adding that there were indications that Ansar al-Sharia – which translates as Supporters of Islamic Law – may have been involve.
They said some reporting from the region suggested that members of al Qaeda’s north Africa-based affiliate, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved.
“It bears the hallmarks of an organized attack,” one US official said. However, some US officials cautioned against assuming that the attacks were deliberately organized to coincide with the Sept 11 anniversary.
Security personnel were separated from Stevens during the attack, US officials said, describing a chaotic scene of smoke, gunfire and confusion.
A US official said Washington had ordered the evacuation of all US personnel from Benghazi to Tripoli and was reducing staffing in the capital to emergency levels.
The US military is moving two Navy destroyers toward the Libyan coast, giving the Obama administration flexibility for any future action against Libyan targets, according to a US official. The military also is dispatching a Marine Corps anti-terrorist security team to boost security in Libya.
“The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack,” Obama said, while insisting it would not threaten relations with Libya’s new government. “… And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.”
Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief apologized to the United States over an attack.
The violence in Benghazi and Cairo threatened to spread to other Muslim countries. Police fired teargas at angry demonstrators outside the US embassy in Tunisia and several hundred people gathered in front of the US embassy in Sudan. In Morocco, a few dozen protesters burned American flags and chanted slogans near the US consulate in Casablanca.
The attacks could alter US attitudes towards the wave of revolutions across the Arab world that toppled secularist authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and brought Islamists to power.
The violence also could have an impact on the closely contested US presidential race ahead of the Nov 6 election.
Republican Mitt Romney, Obama’s challenger, criticized the president’s response to the crisis. He said the timing of a statement from the US embassy in Cairo denouncing “efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” made Obama look weak as protesters were attacking US missions.
