Obama fumes as gunmen kill US ambassador to Libya, and three others

United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday described the killing of US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other embassy staff in a rocket attack on their car as “outrageous.”

Obama, who was reacting to Tuesday’s murder of the officials said in a statement, “I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States.”
Cable News Network quotes a contractor working at the mission as saying that the other three victims were American security staff.
He said he saw all four bodies on the street Wednesday morning.
A Libyan official told Reuters that Stevens and the three others were killed as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a US-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Gunmen had attacked and burned the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a centre of last year’s uprising against former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one consular official, Reuters reports.
The building was thereafter evacuated.
The Libyan official said Stevens was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.
“The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them,” the official in Benghazi told Reuters.
There was no immediate comment from the State Department in Washington.
US ambassadors in such volatile countries are accompanied by tight security, usually travelling in well-protected convoys. Security officials will be considering whether the two attacks were coordinated.   Libyan deputy prime minister Mustafa Abu Shagour condemned the killing of the US diplomats as a cowardly act.
The consular official had died after clashes between Libyan security forces and Islamist militants around the consulate building. Looters raided the empty compound and some onlookers took pictures after calm returned.
Libya’s Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif told CNN that consulate security staff opened fire when they heard gunfire outside the mission.
“This led to more anger and this is when the consulate was stormed,” he said, suggesting that there were elements loyal to the regime of deposed dictator Moammar Gadhafi aiming to create chaos among the protesters.
“Criminals managed to get in and they burned and ransacked the consulate,” he said.
In neighbouring Egypt, demonstrators had torn down an American flag and burned it during the protest. Some tried to raise a black flag with the words “There is no God but God, and Mohammad is his messenger”, a Reuters witness said.
US pastor Terry Jones, who had inflamed anger in the Muslim world in 2010 with plans to burn the Koran, said he had promoted “Innocence of Muslims,” which US media said was produced by an Israeli-American property developer; but clips of another film called “Mohammad, Prophet of Muslims,” had been circulating for weeks before the protest.
Libya’s interim government has struggled to impose its authority on a myriad of armed groups that have refused to lay down their weapons and often take the law into their own hands.
It was clearly overwhelmed by Tuesday night’s attack on the consulate that preceded the assault on the ambassador.
“The Libyan security forces came under heavy fire and we were not prepared for the intensity of the attack,” said Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya’s Supreme Security Committee.   In Benghazi, unidentified men had shot at the consulate buildings, while others threw handmade bombs into the compound, setting off small explosions.
On Wednesday morning, the compound stood empty, with passers-by freely walking in to take a look at the damage.
Walls were charred and a small fire burned inside one of the buildings. A small group of men was trying to extinguish the flames and three security men briefly surveyed the scene.
A Reuters reporter saw chairs, table and food lying alongside empty shells. Some blood stains could also be seen in front of one of the buildings.
Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur said Stevens was “a friend of Libya, and we are shocked at the the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.”
“I condemn these barbaric acts in the strongest possible terms. This is an attack on America, Libya and free people everywhere,” Abushagur said on Twitter.
Three cars were torched and the crowd of around 2,000 protesters in Cairo was a mixture of Islamists and teenage soccer fans known for fighting police and who played a part in the revolt that toppled Egypt’s leader Hosni Mubarak last year.
The fortress-like US mission is near Tahrir Square, where Egypt’s uprising began and the scene of many protests since. Youths danced and chanted football songs.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a statement late on Tuesday, confirmed the death of the consular diplomat in Libya, who was not identified, and condemned the attack there; but she made no mention of an attack on the ambassador’s car.