Riot police fired warning shots and tear gas early Thursday outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to keep hundreds of protesters, while demonstrators in the Yemeni capital city of Sana'a breached a wall at the American mission, witnesses and government officials said.
The protests are the latest to roil the Middle East over the online release of a film produced in the United States that denigrates Prophet Mohammed.
Several thousand protesters demonstrated outside the embassy in Sana'a, with some breaching the embassy's security wall.
"Given recent regional developments, earlier this morning, angry protesters unfortunately flooded the security perimeter of the U.S. embassy in Sana'a, Yemen and breached the embassy's wall," according to a statement released by Yemen through its embassy in Washington.
"Security services have quickly restored order to the embassy's complex. Fortunately no casualties were reported from this chaotic incident."
Protesters burned tires outside the embassy, while Yemeni security forces attempted to disperse the crowd of several thousand by firing shots in the air, the witnesses said.
Hours earlier in Cairo, six police officers suffered minor injuries during the clashes, said Alla Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Egyptian Interior Ministry. Some protesters received medical treatment inside ambulances.
Demonstrators threw rocks and Molotov cocktails as police tried to disperse them by firing tear gas canisters from police vehicles as they drove through Tahrir Square, near the embassy.
The clashes came amid heightened tensions at U.S. diplomatic missions in the region following Tuesday's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other consular officials dead.
On Tuesday, the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, several men scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and tore down its U.S. flag.
About 500 protesters turned out Wednesday in Cairo to demonstrate against a film that mocks Islam's prophet.
Wednesday night's protest turned violent as demonstrators threw rocks and pushed through barbed wire fencing outside the embassy, according to Mahmoud. Two police trucks and a car were set afire.
"Forces were able to push them down toward Tahrir Square farther from embassy street," Mahmoud said, adding that some arrests had been made.
Many of the protesters chanted anti-U.S. slogans. By early Thursday, protesters had been pushed 100 yards from the embassy, said journalist Ian Lee in Cairo.
More than a dozen people were injured in the clashes, which continued after midnight, said Khaled Khatib of the Health Ministry.
Earlier, Egypt's president spoke in the "strongest terms" about Tuesday's incident at the Cairo embassy -- but not against the attack.
WhiIe Egypt's prime minister called Tuesday's incident "regrettable" and unjustified, President Mohamed Morsy condemned the anti-Muslim film that incited the protesters.
Morsy made a reference to Egypt's duty to protect diplomatic missions and its opposition to unlawful protesters, but did not mention those who stormed the embassy.
"The presidency condemns in the strongest terms the attempt of a group to insult the place of the Messenger, the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and condemns the people who have produced this radical work," the president said in a statement posted on his Facebook page. "The Egyptian people, both Muslims and Christians, refuse such insults on sanctities."
The statement noted that "the Egyptian government is responsible to protect private and public properties and diplomatic missions in addition to embassy headquarters of various countries" and that "it respects and protects the right of expression and the right to protest peacefully under the law and will firmly oppose any irresponsible attempt to veer off the law."
