A deadly assault on Tuesday evening in Libya has left the American Ambassador and three other Americans dead. In a calculated attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his colleagues were killed because of outrage by radicals over a film trailer that mocked Islam’s Muhammad.
Libya’s new president apologized Wednesday for the attack, which underlined the lawlessness plaguing a region trying to recover from months of upheaval.
Ambassador Chris Stevens, 52, died as he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as a crowd of hundreds attacked the consulate Tuesday evening, many of them firing machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
By the end of the assault, much of the building was burned out and trashed. Stevens was the first US ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1979.
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. on Wednesday, 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 no other injuries, he said.
Both Barack Obama and Libya’s interim president, Mohammed el-Megarif condemned the attacks. However, Obama took time to condemn Mitt Romney for criticizing an appalling apology issued by the State Department before he condemned the attacks on the consulate.
“I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi,” Obama said, adding the four Americans “exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe.”
“We extend our apology to America, the American people and the whole world,” el-Megarif said.
Mitt Romney also criticized the attacks saying:
I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.
A Libyan doctor who attended to Stevens said that he died from asphyxiation brought on by smoke inhalation.
The video that has been put forth as an excuse for the assault can be seen below.
It’s hardly even worth watching. It is a poorly made film that was written and produced by 56-year-old Sam Bacile. Bacile is a California real estate developer. He told the Associated Press that he was an Israeli Jew and an American citizen.
Though Bacile claims he had not expected such violence, but did call Islam a “cancer.”
“We extend our apology to America, the American people and the whole world,” el-Megarif said.
Whatever was done by Bacile does not justify what took place in Libya. The religion of “peace” once again shows that it is anything but peaceful.
