The U.S. has deployed an FBI investigation team and drones to Libya to search for those responsible for the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
By NBC News staff and wire services
KHARTOUM -- Sudan has rejected a U.S. request to send a platoon of Marines to bolster security at the U.S. embassy outside Khartoum, the state news agency SUNA said on Saturday.
A U.S. official,?who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to disclose details on the troop movement,?said Saturday that the objection held up the?deployment of 50 Marines.
Another official, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, didn't speak about the Marines but acknowledged?Sudan had "recommitted itself both publicly and privately to continue to protect our Mission, as it is obligated to do under the Vienna Convention."
"We are continuing to monitor the situation closely to ensure we have what we need to protect our people and facility," Nuland said.
AFP - Getty Images
Smoke billows from the US embassy in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Friday during a protest against an amateur film mocking Islam.
On Friday, around 5,000 people protested against a film that insults the Prophet Muhammad, storming the German embassy before breaking into the U.S. mission.
They also attacked the British embassy. At least two people were killed in clashes with police, according to state media.
A U.S. official told Reuters on Friday that Washington would send Marines to Sudan to improve security at the embassy, which is located outside Khartoum for security reasons.
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"Sudan is able to protect the diplomatic missions in Khartoum and the state is committed to protecting its guests in the diplomatic corps," Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti told SUNA.
The violent protests in response to an anti-Islamic film have been spreading across the Middle East and the North Africa region, with attention focused on U.S. embassies and offices. NBC News' Jim Maceda reports.
Sudan beefed up security at some missions on Saturday. A riot police truck was parked in front of the deserted German embassy, which protesters had set on fire on Friday. An Islamic flag raised by the crowd was still flying. Three officers manned the main gate.
More than 20 police officers were sitting in front of the U.S. Embassy.
The film, which depicts Muhammad as a womanizer and charlatan, was made in the United States, and Muslim outrage has led to crowds assaulting U.S. diplomatic missions in a number of Arab countries.
U.S. authorities are interviewing a California man suspected of making an anti-Islamic film that has sparked violent protests across the Middle East.
Sudan has also criticized Germany for allowing a protest last month by right-wing activists carrying caricatures of Muhammad, and for Chancellor Angela Merkel's award in 2010 to a Danish cartoonist who had depicted the prophet, triggering unrest across the Islamic world.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been under pressure from Islamists who feel the government has given up the religious values of his 1989 Islamist coup.
The Sudanese government had called for protests against the film, but peaceful ones. President Barack Obama's administration said it had nothing to do with the movie, which is little more than an amateurish video clip and appears to have been made in California.
This article includes reporting by NBC News' Catherine Chomiak, Reuters and The Associated Press.
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