Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday called for nationwide protests Friday after a film deemed offensive to Islam sparked a deadly attack in Libya and furious protests in Cairo.

The Brotherhood calls "for peaceful protests on Friday outside all the main mosques in all of Egypt's provinces to denounce offenses to religion and to the Prophet," the Muslim Brotherhood's Secretary General Mahmud Hussein said in a statement.

Security has been stepped up in the area around the US embassy in Cairo, a security official told Agence France Presse, after a film deemed offensive to Islam sparked violence outside the U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya.

"There is an increased security presence in central Cairo, particularly around the American embassy, following the protest yesterday," the official told AFP.

An armed mob protesting a film deemed offensive to Islam attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi Tuesday killing a U.S. official, hours after angry Islamists stormed Washington's embassy in Cairo.

Libya's deputy interior minister Wanis al-Sharif told Agence France Presse: "One American official was killed and another injured in the hand. The other staff members were evacuated and are safe and sound."

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi travels on Thursday to Brussels for talks with European Union leaders on his first trip to Europe since his election, the EU said in a statement.

Morsi, who in June was elected Egypt's first Islamist leader following an uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak early last year, is due to meet EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.

Egyptian authorities ordered the arrest of ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak's last Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq on Tuesday on suspicion of corruption, judicial sources said.

Shafiq, who has been living abroad in the United Arab Emirates since narrowly losing the first post-Mubarak elections to Islamist incumbent Mohamed Morsi in June, has been barred from travel using his Egyptian passport since last month.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that the new U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will meet Syrian President Bashar Assad when he travels to the conflict-ravaged country.

"Special representative Brahimi is soon going to have a meeting with Syrian authorities including president Assad, and he has already been engaged with the key stakeholders," Ban told a news conference in Bern, without providing more details about the highly anticipated visit.

Iran said it was joining officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey for a four-way "contact group" meeting in Cairo looking at ways to calm the conflict in Syria.

An Iranian deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, had left Tehran for the Egyptian capital to take part in the meeting, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Iran's Al-Alam Arabic-language broadcaster.

U.N. and Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Cairo on Sunday where he will hold talks with League officials ahead of an expected visit to Damascus, an airport official said.

Brahimi came from New York via Paris for what is his first visit to the region after taking up his appointment in early September as the peace envoy for Syria, replacing former U.N. chief Kofi Annan.

Thirty complaints have been filed against Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, former head of Egypt's army, and his deputy General Sami Anan, for suppressing last year's popular uprising, a judicial source said Sunday.

Anan is also the subject of an additional complaint accusing him of illegally acquiring building plots near Cairo, the source said.

Egypt's armed forces have killed 32 "criminal elements" in an ongoing operation against Islamists in the lawless Sinai peninsula, a military spokesman said on Saturday.

Colonel Ahmed Mohammed Ali told reporters that 38 people including "non-Egyptians" had been arrested during "Operation Sinai," which was launched on August 7, days after gunmen killed 16 soldiers at a border post there.