100 U.S. Citizens Evacuated from Tunisia
Around 100 U.S. citizens have been evacuated from Tunisia since an attack on the embassy in Tunis by angry Muslim protesters that left four people dead, several sources said on Monday.
"The American nationals were evacuated on Sunday," a diplomatic source told AFP, without saying how many had left the country.
A security source said 100 Americans, including embassy officials and residents, left the capital on a Tunisair flight.
Washington ordered non-essential diplomatic staff and their relatives to leave Sudan and Tunisia following violent anti-American protests at the U.S. missions there that killed six people in total.
Protests over the trailer of a film mocking Islam published on YouTube first broke out on Tuesday in Egypt and Libya, where an armed mob assaulted the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
The demonstrations then spread to Muslim countries around the world, with protesters hurling petrol bombs and storming the sprawling U.S. embassy complex in Tunis on Friday, before police fired live rounds and tear gas to disperse them.
The U.S. State Department advised American citizens against "all travel" to Tunisia after the attack, and urged those remaining in the country to exercise "extreme caution and avoid demonstrations."
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://naharnet.com/stories/en/53862 |