Yemen students hold anti-US rally, reject Marines

AFP , Monday 17 Sep 2012

Sanaa University students call for expulsion of US ambassador and condemn deployment of US Marines to protect embassy

Hundreds of Yemeni students demonstrated on Monday calling for the expulsion of the US ambassador and condemning the deployment of US Marines to protect his embassy, an AFP correspondent said.

"Leave slave of the devil, leave ambassador of the Americans," chanted the protesters at Sanaa University. "You coward American, the Prophet of God cannot be insulted.""Express your anger and resentment by boycotting American products," a banner read in the latest protest linked to a movie produced in the United States mocking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. "We reject any US military presence on Yemeni ground regardless of the excuse," a statement read out by an organiser said.

On Thursday, an angry mob of protesters tried to storm the embassy grounds and clashed with Yemeni security forces, leaving four dead. The embassy has since suspended all consular services for two weeks.

In response to the violence, the US also ordered the deployment of a Marines anti-terrorism unit to Sanaa to help protect its embassy, a move that was condemned by the Yemeni parliament.

Late on Sunday, a high-ranking government official confirmed that "an additional 50 Marines have joined" a small number of US troops already in Yemen to protect the US mission, the official news agency Saba reported.

The troops have been deployed "temporarily" and their duty is "restricted to offering personal protection for US diplomats working at the embassy," the official said.

Protests over a trailer for an anti-Islam film on YouTube first broke out last Tuesday in Egypt and Libya, where the US consulate in Benghazi came under attack by an armed mob, killing the US ambassador and three other Americans.

The low-budget movie "Innocence of Muslims," in which actors with strong American accents portray Muslims as immoral and gratuitously violent, has since sparked protests across other Muslim countries.

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