Senior Benghazi commanders have been summoned to the capital Tripoli today to plan action against Islamist extremists accused of killing the US ambassador as al-Qaeda warned of more attacks on American officials.
US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed in an attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi Photo: Getty Images
By Richard Spencer, in Benghazi
11:41AM BST 18 Sep 2012
The new prime mininster, Mustafa Abushagur, and acting president, Mohammed Magarief, are understood to have called the meeting in response to pressure from President Barack Obama to take action.
The meeting will consider to what extent the attack was the work of local Islamist extremists, and how much it was co-ordinated with the "foreign elements" identified by Mr Magarief in interviews over the weekend, particularly members of Al-Qaeda from other parts of North Africa.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African branch of what is now often called a terrorist franchise, praised the killing of Chris Stevens at the consulate in Benghazi last Tuesday as "the best gift" and called for more American officials to die.
"We encourage all Muslims to continue to demonstrate and escalate their protests and to kill their (American) ambassadors and representatives or to expel them to cleanse our land from their wickedness," it said.
The government and Benghazi leaders deny claims that the militias who run security in Benghazi are too fractured to seize the Islamist militants believed responsible for the attack.
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"We have a better idea who was responsible, and we are now waiting for a government plan," said Mohammed al-Gharabi, a leader with the Union of Revolutionary Committees which run security in Benghazi.
He said he was flying to Tripoli this morning for the meeting with the government, along with Fawzi Bukatif, the former deputy defence minister who is senior commander of the Union.
General Yousef Mangoush, the nominal head of the army in Benghazi, is also thought to be in Tripoli.
There has been no direct claim of responsibility for the killing from inside or outside Libya, and US officials are still saying that it was the result of a protest that either got out of hand or was hijacked by extremists.
But there is increasing evidence that it was a co-ordinated assault that had been planned in advance.
On Monday, a security guard wounded in the attack told The Daily Telegraph that there had been no demonstration before hand but the attack had come out of the blue. He said there was a single warning shot, and then hand grenades were lobbed over the wall, accompanied by heavy shooting from automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
He said more than 30 men managed to charge the gates. "They were shouting, 'Kill the bastards'," he said, adding there were no religious or protest slogans.
He said they saw him and identified him as a Libyan defender of the consulate. "They said, 'Kill the dog!'" Many different accounts have emerged from the chaos of the attack last Tuesday. Among those that now appear not to be true is the claim that the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was dead when he was found in a secure room.
Video posted online yesterday appeared to show a group of civilians finding him and declaring he was still alive. "Allahu akbar," they shout as one man declares he is breathing.
One member of the brigade sent to help clear the consulate said he had helped carry Mr Stevens, still alive, to the car that took him to hospital.
Anes al-Lathram also said it was not true that the Americans "lost" Mr Stevens, as has been claimed - he said that the consulate's translater, who was wounded, was in the same car.
However, the evidence of the security guard, who is still being treated for his injuries and is not being named for his own protection, is more significant to the investigations being conducted in both the United States and Libya into the killing.
Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, insisted on Sunday that the attack on the consulate had started with a protest about the anti-Islam film that had been subject of protests in Cairo earlier in the day.
It's approximately a reaction to this video, and it's a hateful video that had nothing to do with the United States," Miss Rice said. She said that the protest had been "hi-jacked" by some "individual clusters of extremists".
The Libyan squad in charge of security for the building also claimed that the violence was a protest that got out of hand after Americans inside opened fire.
The details are important, not least politically for President Barack Obama who has to decide whether to work with the Libyan authorities to hunt a small group of opportunist extremists or to take retaliatory action against a wider, more organised terror network.
Officials told The Wall Street Journal they had records of telephone conversations on Tuesday between Al-Qaeda and members of a Benghazi-based Islamist militia, Ansar al-Sharia.
The security guard, one of an unarmed five-man squad employed by Blue Mountain security, said the incident began not long after a visit by a Turkish diplomat ended.
The first shot was fired about 9.45pm. "There were no demonstrators outside at all," he said. "There was a national security (police) car outside - when we heard shooting we then heard the car switch on its engine and speed up the road."
He said the attack was well co-ordinated and came in from three sides, and that the armed American guards had only fired back after coming under attack.
He himself was hit by grenade shrapnel, and then was shot through the knee when the first wave of attackers came in. He said those he heard speak had local, Benghazi accents, though he added that two men "looked foreign".
He said some of the attackers wore masks, and many had their trouser legs rolled up - a mark of Salafi, or purist, Muslims and a common feature in members of Ansar al-Sharia.
He said some attackers wanted to shoot him, but another said he was Libyan and should be spared. This man dragged him out of the compound telling him to say nothing so that other attackers thought he was one of them, and he then passed out and woke up in hospital.
He said he was convinced by this that the attackers did not know each other - otherwise they would have known he was not part of the group - and thus were more likely to be a group of Islamists gathered for the purpose of the assault.
ends
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