Unrest continued across the Islamic world as demonstrators in Pakistan broke through a barrier near the U.S. Consulate in Karachi and protesters in Turkey burned a U.S. flag. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
Updated at 7:20 a.m. ET: Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday, setting cars ablaze and shouting "death to America," the latest demonstrations over an anti-Islam movie that ridicules the Prophet Muhammad.
In neighboring Pakistan, where two protesters were reportedly killed Sunday, police fired in the air to disperse a crowd headed toward the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.
Western embassies across the Muslim world are on high alert and the United States has urged vigilance after days of anti-American violence provoked by the film.
Protesters?along the main road to the Afghan capital set fire to two police vehicles and hurled stones at local police officers trying to calm the situation outside Camp Phoenix, a U.S. military base that lies along the road, police officials told NBC News on Monday.
"There were between 3,000 and 4,000 demonstrators (in Kabul). They burned some police cars, but we could split them up and prevent the insecurity widening," Lt. Gen. Fahem Qayem, police quick reaction force commander, told Reuters.
Embassies in Kabul's heavily guarded central zone were placed on lockdown, including the U.S. and British missions, after violence flared near fortified housing compounds for foreign workers in the city's volatile eastern suburbs.
Afghan security forces turned their guns on U.S. and NATO troops, killing four American soldiers and two British troops. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
"We will defend our prophet until we have blood across our bodies. We will not let anyone insult him," protester Jan Agha Pashtun, giving what was apparently a false name to avoid police retaliation, said in Kabul. "Americans will pay for their dishonor."
Evacuating staff
The California-made movie, which mocks the Prophet Muhammad and portrays him as a womanizer and a fool, has triggered violent protests in Muslim countries for nearly a week, including one in Libya in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
The U.S. has responded by bolstering security around diplomatic missions and evacuating staff and nonessential personnel in certain hotspots.
Ambassador Rice: Benghazi attack began spontaneously
The violence is the most serious wave of anti-American protests in the Muslim world since the start of the Arab Spring revolts last year. At least nine people were killed in protests in several countries on Friday.
The crisis presents President Barack Obama with a foreign policy crisis as November elections approach.
Germany followed the U.S. lead and withdrew some staff from its embassy in Sudan, which was stormed on Friday.
Washington ordered non-essential staff and family members to leave its embassy on Saturday after the Khartoum government turned down a U.S. request to send Marines to bolster security.
Non-essential U.S. personnel have also been withdrawn from Tunisia, and Washington urged U.S. citizens to leave the capital Tunis after the embassy there was targeted on Friday.
Youssef Boudlal / Reuters
Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.
Hezbollah chief calls for more protests
In Pakistan, a senior police official said 30 students were arrested at the demonstration in Karachi, which was organized by a religious party, according to Reuters.
One person was killed in a protest in the southern city of?Hyderabad on Sunday.?According to one report, a second protester died in a separate demonstration over the film in Lahore after?complaining that he felt ill from inhaling smoke from American flags set fire at an anti-U.S. rally.
From July 16: In Pakistan's largest city, 'Old Glory' is flammable and profitable
In Indonesia, the world?s most populous Muslim country, police used tear gas and water cannons on Monday to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who massed outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
One police officer was injured by stones thrown by protesters and a handful of demonstrators were detained, television pictures broadcast live from the scene showed. Protesters burned a U.S. flag, according to Reuters.
In Iraq, a suicide car bomber killed seven Iraqis and wounded 11 others, including a member of parliament, close to an entrance to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone on Monday, where several Western embassies are located, police sources told Reuters.
However, it was unclear whether the attack was linked to the anti-film protests. Last week, the?Asaib al-Haq?militia group warned that it would launch attacks on Western targets in anger over the film.
In Iran, a senior official said the government would "track down" those responsible for making the film, state media reported Monday.
"The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns ... this inappropriate and offensive action,'' First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi said, according to the Mehr news agency.
"Certainly it will search for, track, and pursue this guilty person who ... has insulted 1.5 billion Muslims in the world,"?Mehr quoted Rahimi as saying.
The Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, condemned to death the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989 for his novel The Satanic Verses,'' saying its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad was blasphemous.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice recaps the causes and effects of recent violence against Americans in the Middle East.
But the protests, which peaked on Friday, abated over the weekend. Around 350 people chanted slogans at a rally outside the U.S. Embassy in London on Sunday. A small group of protesters burned a U.S. flag outside the embassy in the Turkish capital.
On Sunday, the head of Shiite militant group Hezbollah called for protests in Beirut and nationwide later in the week.
"Those responsible for the film, starting with the U.S., must be held accountable," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said.
"All these developments are being orchestrated by U.S. intelligence," he said.
Panetta warns of continuing violence
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said over the weekend he hoped the worst of the violence was over but U.S. missions must remain on guard.
"It would appear that there is some leveling off on the violence that we thought might take place," he told reporters on his plane en route to Asia on Saturday.
"Having said that, these demonstrations are likely to continue over the next few days, if not longer," he said.
The United States has deployed a significant force in the Middle East to deal with any contingencies and rapid deployment teams were ready to respond to incidents, he said.
A Meet the Press roundtable discusses recent upheaval in the Middle East and how the United States intends to respond.
The foreign minister of Egypt, where hundreds of people were arrested in four days of clashes, assured Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that U.S. diplomatic grounds would be protected.
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Mohamed Kamel Amr told Clinton in a telephone call that the film was designed to incite racial hatred and was therefore "contradictory with laws aimed at developing relationships of peace and mutual understanding between nations and states.?
Rice: Benghazi attack occurred spontaneously
Some U.S. officials have suggested the Benghazi attack was planned by Islamist militants using the video as a pretext, a hypothesis endorsed by interim Libyan President Mohammed al-Megarif.
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"Call it whatever you want, al-Qaida or not, what happened was an act by a group with an agenda for revenge. They chose a specific time, technique and certain victims. This is what it was all about," said al-Megarif.
Al-Megarif told CBS News that dozens of people had been arrested in connection with the attack. Some were from abroad.
But Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told NBC?s "Meet the Press"?that evidence gathered so far shows no indication of a premeditated or coordinated strike in Benghazi.
She said the attack, powered by mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, appeared to be a copycat of demonstrations that had erupted hours earlier outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
Libyan officials are holding 30 to 40 suspecting in the deadly attack of a the US embassy in Libya. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
"It seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons," Rice said, adding that such weaponry is easy to come by in post-revolutionary Libya.
Whether those extremists had ties to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups has yet to be determined, Rice said, noting that the FBI has yet to complete its investigation.
NYT: Months of turmoil ahead in Arab world, White House fears
The uncertainty of an anxious nation questioning what was gained by U.S. support for democratic, pro-Islamic uprisings in Muslim countries has created a sense of urgency that has been difficult for the Obama administration to ignore.
With eight weeks to the November election, anti-American violence across the Islamic world has shifted the focus of the race from the economy to foreign policy. NBC's Peter Alexander reports.
The turbulence has also become a major issue in Obama's re-election campaign, with the Republican rival for the White House, Mitt Romney, laying blame on the president and accusing him of "apologizing" for U.S. values.
NBC News staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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