Christopher Stevens is the first U.S. ambassador to be killed on duty since 1979. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
By By Daniel Strieff, NBC News
New in this version: U.S. won't rule out Islamist militant involvement?
Updated at 1:35 p.m. ET: The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed after protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Mohammad stormed the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
Carrie Dann, Richard Engel, Ellie Hall, Alicia Jennings, M. Alex Johnson, Jim Miklaszewski, Andrea Mitchell, Kerry Sanders, Jeanee Vonessen, Ali Weinberg and Robert Windrem of NBC News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Barack Obama said in Washington that the U.S. condemned Tuesday's attack in the "strongest possible terms" and would work with the Libyan authorities to bring the killers to justice.
"Make no mistake. Justice will be done," he said.
Christopher Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed during an assignment since?Adolph Dubs was slain?in an exchange of gunfire during a kidnapping attempt in Afghanistan in 1979.
Ambassador Stevens was 'courageous and exemplary,' Obama says
Obama called Stevens "a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States."
President Barack Obama, alongside Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, condemns the "outrageous and shocking attack" that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Obama said in an earlier statement that Sean Smith, a Foreign Service information management officer and?father of two children, was also among those who had been killed. Smith had previously been posted to the U.S. Consulate in Montreal, the U.S. Mission in Canada confirmed.
The State Department said the families of the two other victims were still being notified.
"While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants," Obama said in the statement.
Report: Staff rushed to safe house
U.S. consular staff were rushed to a safe house after the initial consulate attack on Tuesday, Libyan Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif said.
An evacuation plane with U.S. commando units then arrived from the capital, Tripoli, to evacuate them from the house, Sharif said at a briefing for reporters.
Sharif laid some of the responsibility for Stevens' death at the feet of the U.S. government, saying the administration should have removed its staff from the country when news of the film's release broke, Al-Jazeera reported.
"They are to blame simply for not withdrawing their personnel from the premises, despite the fact that there was a similar incident when Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed," he said, referring to the death of the deputy chief of al-Qaeda in a U.S. drone strike in June. "It was necessary that they take precautions. It was their fault that they did not take the necessary precautions."
Al-Qaeda statements and posts on militant Islamist forums appeared to support the contention that the attack was about more than just the movie. ?
In his annual statement on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called Tuesday for Islamists to seek revenge for al-Liby's killing. ?
Militants, meanwhile, were celebrating the attack in online postings as "revenge" for the killing of al-Liby, said Evan Kohlmann, an Middle East and terrorism analyst for NBC News.?U.S. officials told NBC News that they couldn't rule out that possibility.?
Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, insisted the U.S. wouldn't be driven from the country.
"We never have been, and we never will be, run off, period," Biden said at a campaign event in Dayton, Ohio. "That's not who we are."
Follow live developments from Libya on BreakingNews.com
A Libyan doctor who treated Stevens said he died of severe asphyxiation, apparently from smoke. In a sign of the chaos of during the attack, Stevens was brought alone by Libyans to the Benghazi Medical Center with no other Americans, and no one at the facility knew who he was, the doctor, Ziad Abu Zeid, told the Associated Press.
Stevens was practically dead when he arrived close to 1 a.m. Wednesday (7 p.m. ET Tuesday), but "we tried to revive him for an hour and a half but with no success," Abu Zeid said. The ambassador had bleeding in his stomach because of the asphyxiation but had no other injuries, he said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that the attack "should shock the people of all faiths around the world."
"I ask myself, how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?" she said. "This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be."
AFP - Getty Images
An armed man waves his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi.
Marines prepared to deploy to region
U.S. officials told NBC News that the Marines were preparing to send as many as 200 Marines to Libya to bolster security around the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.
The Marines Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team would be deployed from a Marine Amphibious Ready Group, already positioned aboard a helicopter carrier in the North Arabian Sea, officials said.
A large group of protesters has been gathering in Cairo, Egypt, since the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
In addition, the Defense and State departments were considering sending additional Marines to other potential trouble spots, including Cairo and Kabul, which have both seen sectarian flare-ups against the U.S.
The officials said that as of now there was no plan for an all-out evacuation of U.S. government personnel from Libya.
Attackers 'just wanted to find an American'
Descriptions of Tuesday's attack described chaos and bloodshed, with Libyan security overrun and retreating.
The Libya Herald quoted a demonstrator at the consulate as saying the protest was peaceful until police and other security forces began firing into the air. A protester then fired a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at a police vehicle but hit the consulate building on Venezia Street, instead, he said.
On Wednesday, the sprawling, leafy compound in Benghazi stood empty, with passersby freely walking in to take a look at the damage. The heat of the fires could still be felt.
Romney slams Obama over attacks on US officials in Libya, Egypt
Libya's interim president, Mohammed el-Megarif, apologized to the U.S. for the attack, which he described as "cowardly." Speaking to reporters, he offered his condolences and vowed to bring the culprits to justice and maintain his country's close relations with the U.S.
Mohammed el-Megarif, Libya's interim president, apologized to the U.S. for the deadly attack. ITV's Richard Pallot reports.
Clinton blamed a "small and savage group" for the violence, not the Libyan government or people.
Stevens was based in Tripoli but was apparently visiting Benghazi for the opening of a U.S. cultural center there, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to a biography posted on the State Department's website, Stevens was a career Foreign Service officer. He had twice served in Libya ? from 2007 to 2009 and in 2011 ? before being named ambassador in May.?Stevens, who was born and raised in northern California, had also held posts in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
Protests in Cairo
Demonstrations following news reports about the anti-Islamic video also broke out Tuesday in Egypt, where protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and tore and replaced the U.S. flag with an Islamic banner.?
More Middle East & North Africa coverage on NBCNews.com
Although it wasn't immediately clear whether it was related, Egypt's prestigious Al-Azhar mosque had earlier Tuesday?condemned a symbolic "trial" of the prophet organized by a U.S. group including Terry Jones, a Christian pastor who triggered riots in Afghanistan in 2010 by?threatening to burn the Koran.
Tuesday's attacks were the first such assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country, at a time when both Libya and Egypt are struggling to overcome the turmoil following the ouster of their longtime leaders, Moammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak, in uprisings last year.
Report: Maker of anti-Islamic film 'Innocence of Muslims' goes into hiding
The film ridiculing Mohammad was reportedly produced by a man who said he was an Israeli filmmaker living in California. It was being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim, Egyptian Christian campaigner in the U.S. Excerpts from the film were posted on YouTube.
Esam Omran Al-Fetori / Reuters
Flames engulf the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi late Tuesday.
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The events appeared to underscore how much the ground in the Middle East has shifted for Washington, which for decades had close ties with Arab dictators who could be counted on to muzzle dissent.
The Obama administration in recent weeks had appeared to overcome some of its initial caution following the election of an Islamist Egyptian president, Muhammad Morsi, offering his government desperately needed debt relief and backing for international loans.
The diplomatic crisis in Libya and Egypt quickly turned political as the Obama and Romney campaigns traded statements overnight. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.
"The victory in the Libyan elections of nationalist rather than fundamentalist forces, and the rise to power in Egypt of the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood, has marginalized the militant strain of Muslim activism,"?Juan Cole, a professor of history and a Middle East expert at the University of Michigan, wrote on his blog.
"One way the fundamentalist vigilantes can hope to combat their marginalization and political irrelevance in the wake of the Arab Spring is to manufacture a controversy that forces people to side with them. I suspect that is what they were doing in Egypt and Libya, in front of the US embassy in Cairo and at the rump consulate in Benghazi," Cole added.
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