Libya Attack Brings Challenges for U.S.
Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
Ben Curtis/Associated Press
Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Mahmud Turkia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
CAIRO — Islamist militants armed with antiaircraft weapons and
rocket-propelled grenades stormed a lightly defended United States
diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya,
late Tuesday, killing the American ambassador and three members of his
staff and raising fresh questions about the radicalization of countries
swept up in the Arab Spring.
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Multimedia
PORT
American Consulate
Site of Tuesday’s attack
Benghazi
Benghazi
LIBYA
2 MILES
The New York Times (street map
data from LeadDog Consulting)
data from LeadDog Consulting)
The ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens,
was missing almost immediately after the start of an intense, four-hour
firefight for control of the mission, and his body was not located
until Wednesday morning at dawn, when he was found dead at a Benghazi
hospital, American and Libyan officials said. It was the first time
since 1979 that an American ambassador had died in a violent assault.
American and European officials said that while many details about the
attack remained unclear, the assailants seemed organized, well trained
and heavily armed and appeared to have at least some level of advanced
planning. But the officials cautioned that it was too soon to tell
whether the attack was related to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Fighters involved in the assault, which was spearheaded by a Islamist
brigade formed during last year’s uprising against Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi, said in interviews during the battle that they were moved to
attack the mission by anger over a 14-minute, American-made video that
depicted the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, as a villainous,
homosexual and child-molesting buffoon. Their attack followed by just a
few hours the storming of the compound surrounding the United States
Embassy in Cairo by an unarmed mob protesting the same video. On
Wednesday, new crowds of protesters gathered outside the United States
Embassies in Tunis and in Cairo.
The wave of unrest set off by the video, posted online in the United
States two months ago and dubbed into Arabic for the first time eight
days ago, has further underscored the instability of the countries that
cast off their longtime dictators in the Arab Spring revolts. It also
cast doubt on the adequacy of security preparations at American
diplomatic outposts in the volatile region.
Benghazi, awash in guns, has recently witnessed a string of
assassinations as well as attacks on international missions, including a
bomb said to be planted by another Islamist group that exploded near
the United States Consulate there as recently as June. But a Libyan
politician who had breakfast with Mr. Stevens at the mission the morning
before he was killed described security as sorely inadequate for an
American ambassador in such a tumultuous environment, consisting
primarily of four video cameras and as few as four Libyan guards.
“This country is still in transition, and everybody knows the extremists
are out there,” said Fathi Baja, the Libyan politician.
Obama Vows Justice
President Obama condemned the killings, promised to bring the assailants
to justice, and ordered tighter security at all American diplomatic
installations. The administration also sent 50 Marines to the Libyan
capital, Tripoli, to help with security at the American Embassy there,
and ordered all nonemergency personnel to leave Libya and warned
Americans not to travel there. A senior defense official said Wednesday
night that the Pentagon was moving two warships toward the Libyan coast
as a precaution.
“These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity,” Mr. Obama
said in a televised statement from the White House Rose Garden, where
he stood with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Make no
mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the
killers who attacked our people.”
In Tripoli, Libyans leaders also vowed to track down the attackers and stressed their unity with Washington.
Yussef Magariaf, president of the newly elected Libyan National
Congress, offered “an apology to the United States and the Arab people,
if not the whole world, for what happened.” He pledged new measures to
ensure the security of foreign diplomats and companies. “We together
with the United States government are on the same side, standing in a
united front in the face of these murderous outlaws.”
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