Witnesses: Libya attack came after militants joined protesters
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At least an hour before the assault began, a stream of cars was seen moving toward the U.S. Consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. By late Tuesday evening, as many as 50 heavily armed militants had gathered outside its high walls.
They joined protesters outside the consulate who were demonstrating against an American movie that they believed denigrated the prophet Muhammad. But according to one witness, the new arrivals neither chanted slogans nor carried banners.
“They said, ‘We are Muslims defending the prophet. We are defending Islam,’ ” Libyan television journalist Firas Abdelhakim said in an interview.
The gunmen soon opened fire, entered the compound and set the consulate’s buildings aflame. Hours later, the compound was overrun and four Americans were dead. Among them were Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, 52, and Sean Smith, a State Department employee.
The chaotic scene was described by senior Obama administration officials, Libyan government officials and witnesses. Details about the attack were still emerging late Wednesday. Key facts remain unclear, particularly how Stevens died and how his body wound up at a Benghazi hospital.
Even as evidence was being assembled, the early indications were that the assault had been planned and the attackers had cannily taken advantage of the protest at the consulate.
“Was this a spontaneous act of violence, was this capitalizing on the opportunity posed by [a protest], or was this separate and apart from al-Qaeda?” asked Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House intelligence committee. “Any of those are possible,” Schiff said, but accounts of the attack and the firepower employed “indicate something more than a spontaneous protest.”
Others seemed more certain. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the intelligence committee, said the assault appeared to be well planned and well organized, with attackers executing military-like maneuvers.
A senior U.S. intelligence official said, “We haven’t seen any significant indication of al-Qaeda involvement in this attack,” adding that there are conflicting indications of the extent to which it was planned. “We’ve seen some indications that point us in that direction and others that do not,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. He declined to elaborate, except to say that U.S. spy agencies had seen no intelligence indicating such an attack was coming.
U.S. officials said the CIA, the FBI and other agencies were mobilizing to identify and pursue the attackers, an effort that could be aided by U.S. drones that have continued to conduct surveillance flights over the country since Tripoli fell 13 months ago.
Officials said the assault may have been carried out by an affiliate of al-Qaeda, perhaps seeking to avenge the death of a Libyan who had served as the terrorist group’s No. 2 operative until he was killed in Pakistan in June by a U.S. drone strike.
In a somber appearance in the White House Rose Garden, President Obama issued an unusually emotional warning, saying, “Make no mistake, justice will be done.”
But beyond the statements of resolve, there were also expressions of incredulity: How could an American facility that had been attacked just three months ago have remained so vulnerable? How could a city that the United States helped protect during the Libyan uprising have become the setting for such a grisly strike against the United States?
“How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?” asked Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be.”
The consulate is a walled-off villa with a swimming pool and palm trees on an unpaved side street in the Fwayhat district of Benghazi. It fit in with the other residences in the upscale neighborhood, where walled compounds surround green gardens and dusty streets are lined with shops and cafes.
Benghazi residents said the consulate never had a major security presence, and lawmakers in Washington described it as a “temporary” facility that did not meet the latest State Department security requirements and was scheduled to be replaced. U.S. military officials said it was not guarded by U.S. Marines, as are most embassies and many consulates.
The anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks prompted extra precautions at many U.S. facilities overseas, as well as apparent gallows humor from one of the Americans in Benghazi who was later killed.
Smith reportedly sent an electronic message to an online video-game counterpart earlier in the evening: “assuming we don’t die tonight,” said the message, according to the counterpart, who posted it online. “We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.”
Stevens, who had spent many years in Libya, had arrived Monday from the embassy in Tripoli for a week of routine meetings. A friend who spent Monday and Tuesday with him said Stevens held meetings with nongovernmental organizations and militia leaders on both days. When the friend dropped Stevens off at the consulate Tuesday afternoon, he said, nothing appeared to be amiss — beyond the protesters.
The first protesters had showed up around noon. Wanis al-Sharif, the deputy Libyan interior minister, said in an interview that the demonstrators were angered by a low-budget American film that portrayed the prophet Muhammad in a blasphemous manner. As the day wore on, Sharif said, the anger escalated and people with weapons infiltrated the crowd.
Preliminary reports speculated that the violence grew spontaneously out of anger over the film. But U.S. and Libyan officials cast doubt on that theory, with some suggesting that the attackers took advantage of the diversion created by protesters.
Sharif said the Libyan government suspected the gunmen were loyal to former leader Moammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown with American help last year and was later killed.
An attack on Sept. 11
Other fingers pointed to possible al-Qaeda affiliates. The suspicion of al-Qaeda involvement was supported by the Sept. 11 timing as well as the release of a recording this week by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri urging Libyans to avenge the death by CIA drone strike of his deputy, Abu Yahya al-Libi.
There had been signs of a threat earlier. On June 5, a bomb exploded outside the gates of the consulate in the first attack on an American facility since the fall of Gaddafi. No one was injured.
A jihadist group calling itself “Brigades of Imprisoned Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman” claimed responsibility, according to the Site monitoring service. The group posted a message on jihadist forums saying the attack was a response to the drone strike that killed Libi in Pakistan on June 4. The group is named after the blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
On June 10, two British bodyguards were injured in an attack in Benghazi on a convoy carrying the British ambassador. The assailants used rocket-propelled grenades to attack the convoy as it was pulling out of the British Consulate.
Militants also have been blamed for attacks on the Tunisian Consulate in Benghazi and on the International Committee of the Red Cross in Libya.
A senior Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon, said there was a “robust American security presence” at the consulate. When asked whether security had been strengthened after the recent attacks, the official said, “We don’t ever talk about the details of those kinds of things.”
The most detail about the events that unfolded Tuesday night at the consulate came from the conference call and from interviews with U.S. intelligence officials along with witnesses, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
According to these officials, the protest turned into a gun battle around 10 p.m., roughly half an hour after the convoy of militants arrived at the consulate. They said men in the crowd began firing at the consulate. Within 15 minutes, the assailants had broken through the gates, scaled the walls and set fire to the main building. Images captured at the scene showed structures and vehicles engulfed in flames.
Stevens’s friend said in an interview that he returned to the compound when he heard about the fighting and found a chaotic scene. “People were panicking and crying because they were shooting, and with the shooting and explosions, it was really chaos,” said the friend, who insisted on anonymity for fear of jeopardizing his safety.
Another witness, Ben Eissa el-Mahjoub, a member of a media team that was at the scene, said the incident was not a protest.
“Armed groups broke into the American consulate,” he said, with the consulate resisting from inside. He said the security teams had tried to protect the ambassador and the consulate. At one point, he said, someone fired a rocket-propelled grenade from the back of the crowd toward the compound.
A two-hour gun battle
While U.S. security personnel and Libyan guards returned fire, the embassy’s top security officer, who had accompanied the ambassador from Tripoli, tried to get Stevens and Smith to safety inside the consulate. In the smoke and chaos, they became separated. When the security officer made it outside, he could not find Stevens and Smith.
He summoned help and went back inside the burning building. The rescuers discovered Smith’s body, but the ambassador was nowhere to be found.
Under continuing fire, U.S. personnel and other consulate employees fled to an annex next door to the compound. That building, which has its own perimeter walls, came under fire that lasted two hours. Two more Americans were killed in the gun battle; they have not been identified, pending notification of their families.
Around 2 a.m. Wednesday, Libyan security forces and their U.S. counterparts were finally able to secure the compound and resume the search for the ambassador.
But at some point, Stevens had been taken from the consulate to Benghazi Medical Center. U.S. officials said it is unclear who took him or whether he was alive at the time. Photographs posted by Getty Images showed a figure identified as Stevens, his skin smudged with smoke residue, being dragged out by Libyans attempting a desperate rescue.
A senior official at the hospital said Stevens was dead when he arrived. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly, said that “there were no signs of external injuries,” leading doctors to believe that he had died of asphyxiation. The hospital also received 15 Libyans with injuries that included gunshot wounds and fractures, the official said, but it did not treat any other Americans.
“It was rockets that came in that created the fire and smoke,” said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Casting doubt on the possibility that the attack was carried out by a disorganized mob, Ruppersberger said: “This rogue group had weapons. And they were able to shoot.”
Birnbaum reported from Cairo. Tara Bahrampour, Karen DeYoung, Julie Tate and Craig Whitlock in Washington and Ingy Hassieb in Cairo contributed to this report.
U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said Wednesday that an attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. Consulate in eastern Libya may have been planned by extremists and inspired by al-Qaeda.
The U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed Tuesday in an assault on the consulate in the city of Benghazi. President Obama strongly condemned the attack and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, vowing that “justice will be done.”
The attack followed a violent protest at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo over a low-budget anti-Muslim film made in the United States, and it initially appeared that the assault on the Benghazi consulate was another spontaneous response. But senior U.S. officials and Middle East analysts raised questions Wednesday about the motivation for the Benghazi attack, noting that it involved the use of a rocket-propelled grenade and followed an al-Qaeda call to avenge the death of a senior Libyan member of the terrorist network.
Libyan officials and a witness said the attackers took advantage of a protest over the film to launch their assault.
Stevens, 52, and the others appear to have been killed inside the temporary consulate, possibly by a rocket-propelled grenade, according to officials briefed on the assault.
The chain of events remains unclear, but Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said there is strong evidence that the attack was planned.
“This was a well-armed, well-coordinated event,” Rogers said in an interview on MSNBC. “It had both indirect and direct fire, and it had military maneuvers that were all part of this very organized attack.” Rogers referred to weapons that aimed directly at a target and those, such as rockets and mortars, that are fired without a direct line of sight.
According to Firas Abdelhakim, a Libyan television journalist who said he witnessed part of the attack, a group of several dozen armed men mounted the assault.
Abdelhakim said he was about three miles from consulate when he saw 20 to 30 cars driving toward the consulate shortly before 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.
When he reached the consulate, he said, he saw about 50 armed men gathering who were not carrying banners or chanting slogans. When asked who they were, they described themselves variously as “Muslims defending the Prophet” and “a group of Muslim youth” who were “defending Islam,” Abdelhakim said.
He said he saw Libyan security forces — the February 17 Battalion — guarding the consulate, a walled-off villa compound with several buildings, a swimming pool and one security watchtower on an unpaved side street in a prosperous residential district of Benghazi.
The assault on the consulate started sometime between 10:30 and 11 p.m., and the two groups traded fire, Abdelhakim said.
Benghazi residents said the compound had never previously had a major security presence around it.
The Defense Department has dispatched two Marine antiterrorism security teams to Libya to reinforce security there, a senior Marine official said. In a statement issued by the White House early Wednesday, Obama said he had directed an increase in security at U.S. diplomatic posts around the world.
The FBI said in a statement that it has opened an investigation into the deaths of the four Americans and the attack on the consulate. It said investigators would work closely with the State Department and “the appropriate government partners” in Libya.
“The FBI will not speculate on the facts and circumstances surrounding the attacks,” the statement said.
Stevens and the others were initially reported to have been killed when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their vehicle as they were fleeing the consulate. But Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who received a preliminary briefing from U.S. officials on the attack, said all four of the dead were inside a room in the consulate compound, where they had been trying to organize an evacuation. He said their bodies were pulled out by Libyan rescuers.
A senior U.S. military official gave the same account, adding that the bodies of the four were transported to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, then out of Libya.
Kerry said there may have been a plan to attack the consulate but that it was unlikely to have been aimed at Stevens, who was there by “happenstance” after stopping by the consulate during a “side trip” in eastern Libya.
“I think they were planning to take the place, no matter who was there,” said Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said all four of the dead were State Department civilians. About a half dozen Americans were wounded in the attack, and it was not immediately clear if any of them were military. No U.S. Marines were posted at the consulate as part of its security detail, the official said.
The attack was the latest in a series of violent assaults in Benghazi over the last several months — many, but not all, directed against U.S. interests there.
Tuesday’s assault was the second on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. On June 5, a bomb exploded outside the gates of the compound in the first targeting of an American facility since the fall of longtime strongman Moammar Gaddafi last year.
The following day in Benghazi, two British bodyguards were injured in an attack on a convoy carrying the British ambassador to Libya. Last month, unknown assailants attacked a compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Libyan port city of Misurata. No one was injured in that attack.
A group allied with al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for several recent assaults in Benghazi. But there was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday’s attack.
Wanis al-Sharif, Libya’s deputy interior minister, told reporters Wednesday that “among the protesters, there were some who infiltrated the march to start chaos.”
Obama said Wednesday morning that the United States “condemns in the strongest possible terms this outrageous and shocking attack” and is working with the Libyan government to secure U.S. diplomats and bring the attackers to justice.
Appearing with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said: “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, but there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.”
He said many Libyans have already joined that stand, and he vowed, “This attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya.” He stressed that Libyan security personnel had “fought back against the attackers alongside Americans” and that other Libyans carried Stevens’s body to the hospital and helped U.S. diplomats find safety.
Obama added: “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”
Obama spoke as some Middle East analysts suggested that the attack in Benghazi might have been launched as revenge for the death of a top al-Qaeda militant who was killed by an American drone strike in Pakistan in June.
Mathieu Guidere, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Toulouse in France and an expert on Islamist radicals, said information from militant Web sites suggested that Libyan extremists seized on the film to rally people around an attack on the consulate. He said the attack appeared to be motivated by a recent call by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader, to avenge the killing of Hassan Mohammed Qaed, better known as Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan-born cleric who was a key aide to Osama bin Laden.
Quillam, a respected British think-tank that monitors extremist groups, said its sources in Libya and elsewhere in the region described the attack as a well-planned assault that occurred in two waves and was organized by a group of about 20 militants. The first wave involved driving the Americans from the consulate, and the second was a coordinated attack using a rocket-propelled grenade after they were taken to another location.
“These are acts committed by uncontrollable jihadist groups,” said Noman Benotam, the president of Quillam.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian who took over as al-Qaeda leader after bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani hideout in May, issued a 42-minute video Monday acknowledging Libi’s death and calling on Muslims, particularly fellow Libyans, to seek vengeance for the killing.
“With the martyrdom of Sheikh Hassan Mohammed Qaed, may God have mercy on him, people will flock even more to his writings and his call, God willing,” Zawahiri said in the video. “His blood urges you and incites you to fight and kill the crusaders.”
Stevens, a longtime Middle East hand in the State Department, was named ambassador to Libya in May. He had worked in Libya for a number of years, both before and after the fall of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.
In an interview with The Washington Post in June, Stevens said Libya’s emerging democracy faces a threat from small, violent Islamist groups that reject elections.
“These are, for the most part, new groups that are emerging after the revolution, and the Libyans themselves don’t know who they are,” Stevens said. “Some of these groups are probably forming out of the militias that grew out of the revolution, and they have access to arms, so that is troubling.”
On the recent series of violent incidents in Libya, Stevens said, “When people cross the line, it’s also a function of a lack of strong state and police to enforce the law.”
Obama called Stevens a “courageous and exemplary representative” of the U.S. government, who “selflessly served our country and the Libyan people.”
“His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice,” Obama said.
Clinton said she had called Libyan President Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf “to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya.”
The attack in Benghazi followed protests in neighboring Egypt, where a group of protesters scaled the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday evening and entered its outer grounds, pulled down an American flag, then tried to burn it outside the embassy walls, according to witnesses. On Wednesday morning, a sit-in by several dozen protesters continued outside the Cairo embassy.
The attack on the embassy in Cairo was apparently prompted by outrage over an independent, anti-Muslim film made in the United States. It illustrated a deep vein of anti-American sentiment, even though the United States supported Arab Spring revolutions and was instrumental in providing financial and diplomatic support for their newly-democratic governments.
After his Rose Garden remarks, Obama headed to the State Department with Clinton to address a closed session of the diplomatic workforce. A White House official said Obama held the meeting “to express his solidarity with our diplomats stationed around the world.” The official said Obama wanted to “give thanks for the service and sacrifices that our civilians make, and pay tribute to those who were lost.”
Clinton identified one of the dead as Sean Smith, a Foreign Service information management officer for 10 years who was on a temporary assignment in Libya. She said Smith, an Air Force veteran, left a wife and two children. The names of the other two people killed were being withheld pending notification of their families, Clinton said.
Before appearing at the White House with Obama, Clinton called those who attacked the Benghazi consulate a “small and savage group,” praised the response by the Libyan government and people to the violence and said the assault would not deter the United States from helping Libya become free and stable.
“This is an attack that should shock the conscience of people of all faiths around the world,” Clinton said in a solemn speech at the State Department. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of violence.”
“Today many Americans are asking — indeed I asked myself — how could this happen,” she said. “How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding, the world can be. But we must be clear-eyed even in our grief. This was an attack by a small and savage group, not by the people or government of Libya.”
Clinton said Libyans had helped to repel the attackers and lead other Americans to safety, and she said Libya’s president has pledged to pursue those responsible.
Stressing that “a free and stable Libya” is in the U.S. interest, Clinton said, “We will not turn our back on that. Nor will we rest until those responsible for these attacks are found and brought to justice.”
She said some people have sought to justify the violence as “a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” She added: “There is no justification for this.... Violence like this is no way to honor religion or faith, and as long as there are those who would take innocent life in the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.”
Both the Egyptian and Libyan governments condemned the violence outside the American diplomatic compounds. But local security officials in both countries appeared slow to provide protection for the American diplomatic installations and have issued no firm statements explaining the violence.
In a news conference in Tripoli Wednesday, Libya’s prime minister and parliamentary speaker apologized for the assault and extended sympathy for the deaths to the United States and families of the victims.
While they provided no details, they offered two alternative theories regarding the perpetrators, saying at one point that Gaddafi loyalists were responsible but later saying that it involved “extremists” and was related to Tuesday’s anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.
Earlier, however, Sharif, the deputy interior minister, implied to reporters that the attack resulted from a failure of U.S. security at the consulate. “They are to blame simply for not withdrawing their personnel from the premises” despite earlier incidents, Sharif said, according to wire services. “It was necessary that they take precautions.”
The film that appeared to have sparked the protest in Cairo is called “The Innocence of Muslims.” It calls the prophet Muhammad a fraud and shows him having sex. A controversial Cairo television host, Sheikh Khaled Abdallah, aired clips from the video on an Islamic-focused television station on Saturday, and the same video clips were posted online on Monday.
A California real estate developer, Sam Bacile, who described himself as an Israeli Jew, said he made the film. Bacile had gone into hiding on Tuesday, but remained defiant in his condemnations of Islam, the Associated Press reported.
The crisis quickly spilled over into the U.S. presidential campaign, as Mitt Romney issued a brief statement saying he was “outraged” by the assaults. Romney then said, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn the attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Obama’s reelection campaign quickly responded in kind, saying, “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose the launch of a political attack.”
Romney, speaking to reporters on the campaign trail Wednesday, stood by his criticism.
Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1988, when Arnold Raphel was killed in a mysterious airplane crash in Pakistan along with Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq.
The security breach at the embassy in Cairo comes at an awkward time for broader relations between the United States and Egypt, as the new Egyptian government strives to convince the world that it is running a stable and safe country. A 120-person U.S. business delegation was just wrapping up a visit on Tuesday that had been intended to inspire more investment in Egypt. Many of their events were held inside the fortress-like embassy compound in central Cairo that was stormed on Tuesday night.
Relatively few embassy employees were inside when the protesters hopped the wall because many had gone home early, according to a U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly about the developing incident.
Later in the evening, the Egyptian military sealed the entrances to the embassy to secure it from the ongoing protest, witnesses reported. Protesters were still outside the Cairo embassy early Wednesday, but Nuland later said that police had cleared the remainder.
A spokesman for the embassy said that Ambassador Anne Patterson was out of Egypt on unrelated business and that all embassy employees were “safe and accounted for.”
The security breach in Cairo appeared to catch both the United States and Egyptian security forces by surprise, even though the protest was announced in advance. Shortly before the protesters went over the wall, witnesses said, few Egyptian police or military officers were nearby.
“We are, obviously, working with Egyptian security to try to restore order at the embassy,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday. “We all want to see peaceful protests, which is not what happened outside the U.S. mission, so we’re trying to restore calm now.”
Local media estimated that about 2,000 people participated in the protest, though in video footage of the incident only about a dozen appeared to have scaled the embassy wall. The protesters on the wall replaced the U.S. flag with a black flag with an inscription that read, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet.”
A spokesman for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi did not respond to telephone calls requesting comment. “The security of embassies and providing protection for diplomatic delegates is a responsibility of the utmost priority for official authorities in any country,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Protests at the U.S. Embassy are a regular feature of life in Cairo, where many people are suspicious of the United States and resent it for its support for Israel. But no previous protests have actually breached the embassy compound.
The embassy is in central Cairo, just a few blocks from Tahrir Square, and is a complex of several buildings surrounded by high white walls. Usually, police check vehicles in the streets surrounding the embassy, and cars must pass through moveable barriers.
Many protesters at the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday said they were associated with the Salafist political parties al-Nour and al-Asala.
Organizers at the embassy protest told the Associated Press that they’d begun planning the protest last week when a controversial Egyptian Christian activist who lives in the United States, Morris Sadek, started promoting Bacile’s film. Depicting the prophet at all is considered deeply offensive by Muslims.
“We are speaking out and will never be tolerant toward any curses for our prophet,” said Moaz Abdel Kareem, 37, who had a long beard typical of followers of the Salafist movement and was carrying a black flag.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Egypt had condemned insults to religion, saying in a statement that “we firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Morsi is a member, said that the United States should do a better job of protecting Islam.
“It isn’t a matter of freedom of speech,” Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Gozlan said. “It’s a matter of a holy Islamic symbol.
Birnbaum reported from Cairo. Sari Horwitz, Douglas Frantz , Tara Bahrampour and Craig M. Whitlock in Washington, Edward Cody in Paris, HaithamTabei in Cairo, and Ingy Hassieb in El-Arish, Egypt, contributed to this report.
