Furious anti-Western protests against a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad have spilled over, with violence flaring in Australia and the Muslim world.
The US has ordered all non-essential diplomatic staff to leave Tunisia and Sudan and updated its travel warning for those regions.
"Given the security situation in Tunis and Khartoum, the State Department has ordered the departure of all family members and non-emergency personnel from both posts, and issued parallel travel warnings to American citizens," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.
Overnight, riot police stormed into Cairo's Tahrir Square and rounded up hundreds of people after four days of clashes and demands from protesters for the US ambassador to be expelled.
Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority denounced the attacks on diplomats and embassies across the Middle East as un-Islamic.
In contrast, the Yemen-based branch of Al Qaeda applauded the killings of US diplomats in Libya and urged Muslims to kill more, calling the video posted on the internet another chapter in the "crusader wars" against Islam.
A California man convicted of bank fraud, who has denied reports that he was involved in the film's production, was taken in for questioning by officers investigating possible probation violations stemming from the making of the film.
Afghanistan's Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack on a base that killed two American Marines, saying it was a response to the insults to the founder of Islam.
And hundreds of Muslims took to the streets in Sydney on Saturday, some throwing rocks and bottles in clashes with police. Some carried placards reading "Behead all those who insult the Prophet".
Elsewhere however, Saturday was relatively calm after at least nine deaths in the Muslim world on Friday during protests and attacks on American and other Western embassies.
The film that triggered the unrest
- The film titled Innocence of Muslims mocks the Prophet Mohammed and Islam.
- Touches on themes of paedophilia and homosexuality.
- Features low-budget production values, with actors in false beards in front of stock desert footage.
- Cast members have said they thought it was a fictional epic, and later found their lines had been dubbed over.
- Reportedly written by Nakoula Bassily Nakoula, 55, an Egyptian Copt on conditional release from prison.
- Directed by 65-year-old Alan Roberts.
- Reportedly produced by a US religious group called Media for Christ.
- Promoted by a network of right-wing Coptic and Evangelical Christians with a radical anti-Muslim agenda.
- Among them is Florida pastor Terry Jones, whospoke to The World Today about his involvement.
US president Barack Obama, leading a ceremony on Friday to honour the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans who died in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11, vowed to "stand fast" against the violence.
"The United States will never retreat from the world," he said.
The Pentagon rushed to bolster security at missions abroad.
Libyan authorities said they had identified 50 people who were involved in the attack in which ambassador Christopher Stevens died.
Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, denounced the attacks while urging governments and international bodies to criminalise insults against prophets.
He described the short film as "miserable" and "criminal", but said attacks on the innocent and on diplomats were "a distortion of the Islamic religion and are not accepted by God".
The video, circulating on the internet under several titles including Innocence of Muslims, portrays Mohammad as a womaniser and a fool.
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