The United States has sent Marines from the Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team to help protect its embassy in Yemen during demonstrations, the Pentagon said Friday.

"A FAST platoon is now on the ground in Sanaa," spokesman George Little told reporters, describing the deployment of the 50-strong unit as a "precautionary step" amid anti-American unrest in the Middle East.

Three people were killed on Friday and another 28 wounded in clashes at the U.S. embassy in Tunis, which was stormed by an angry mob protesting a film mocking Islam, official media said, citing the health ministry.

Two of the injured were in a critical condition, the same source said, without giving any details about the victims.

Palestinians on Friday protested an anti-Muslim film, with thousands gathering in the Gaza Strip and hundreds in Jerusalem where they clashed with Israeli police.

In Gaza, thousands of people rallied at demonstrations in Gaza City and the southern town of Rafah, a day after the ruling Hamas party urged citizens to turn out for protests after Friday prayers.

Iraqi protesters burned U.S. and Israeli flags as thousands of people demonstrated for a second day Friday in cities and towns across Iraq against an anti-Islam film that has sparked outrage in the Muslim world.

In the biggest protest, thousands of people turned out in the southern port city of Basra, carrying Iraqi flags and shouting slogans including: "There is no freedom by abuses to the feelings of two billion Muslims."

The Gulf Cooperation Council on Friday condemned an anti-Islam film as well as the violence it has triggered, as Bahrain ordered that websites carrying the movie be blocked.

"This film cannot be accepted or excused as it abuses the feelings of Muslims and non-Muslims who reject insulting prophets, religions and beliefs," GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said in a statement.

Syrian regime forces on Friday used fighter jets and helicopter gunships to pound the city and province of Aleppo, where fierce clashes raged around a military airport, monitors said.

Fighter jets bombarded the rebel-held towns of Al-Bab and Marea near Aleppo city, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that army forces and rebels battled around Minnigh military airport.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood on Friday withdrew calls for nationwide protests in response to a film that mocks Islam's Prophet Mohammed, saying they would instead participate in a "symbolic" demonstration.

"In light of the events of the last two days, the Brotherhood has decided to participate only in a symbolic protest in Tahrir Square, so that there is no more destruction to property, or injuries, or deaths, as has happened in the past," the group's secretary general Mahmoud Hussein said in a statement.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Friday urged a Syrian opposition delegation in Baghdad to learn from the experiences of Iraq, where a new political system was established during years of violence.

Maliki met with "a delegation of representatives of a number of Syrian opposition factions, headed by Dr. Mahmud Daham al-Muslat, the head of the Syrian National Council foreign relations office in the U.S. and Canada," a statement on the Iraqi premier's website said.

Syria is showing "contempt" towards the U.N. atomic watchdog by refusing to cooperate over a suspected undeclared reactor destroyed by Israel in 2007, the U.S. envoy to the agency said Friday.

President Bashar Assad's government "is using its brutal repression of the Syrian people as an excuse for not cooperating with the agency's investigation," Robert Wood told a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board.

Yemeni security forces fired warning shots and water cannon to disperse hundreds of protesters trying to reach the U.S. embassy in Sanaa on Friday, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

The protesters, angered by an anti-Islam film produced in the United States, gathered about 500 meters away from the embassy compound, calling for the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador as they burnt the American flag.