DUSHANBE, September 15, 2012, Asia-Plus -- Fury about a film that insults the Prophet Mohammad tore across the Middle East after weekly prayers on Friday with protesters attacking U.S. embassies and burning American flags as the Pentagon rushed to bolster security at its missions, international media sources report.

Reuters reports that at least seven people were killed as local police struggled to repel assaults after weekly Muslim prayers in Tunisia and Sudan, while there was new violence in Egypt and Yemen and across the Muslim world, driven by emotions ranging from piety to anger at Western power to frustrations with local leaders and poverty.

A Taliban attack on a base in Afghanistan that killed two Americans may also have been timed to coincide with protests.

But three days after the amateurish film of obscure origin triggered an attack on the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans on September 11, President Barack Obama led a ceremony to honor the returning dead and vowed to "stand fast" against the violence.

For a third day, television pictures of flames licking around embassy compounds and masked youths exchanging rocks for teargas from riot police were the dominant images of Arab attitudes to Washington, Reuters reported on Saturday, noting that most diplomatic staff were absent, as most of the region marked the weekend.

The wave of indignation and rage over the film, which portrays Mohammad as a womanizer and a fool, coincided with Pope Benedict''s arrival in Lebanon for a three-day visit to a region still in the throes of upheaval and with Christian minorities fearful of the rise of political Islam from Egypt to Syria.

The involvement of a prominent Egyptian-American Christian in promoting the film has caused anger and worry among Christian leaders in Egypt, who condemned the film, Reuters reported.

In the restive Sinai peninsula, militants attacked an international military observer base close to the Israeli border, a witness and a security source said. Two Colombian soldiers were wounded, an official from the observer force said.

According to the BBC, protesters in Tunis attacked the US embassy, with a large fire reported and shots heard; two were killed.

Reuters says the protesters, many of whom were followers of hardline Salafist Islamist leaders, set fire to the nearby American School, which was closed at the time, and took away laptops.  The protests began after Friday prayers and followed a rallying call on Facebook by Islamist activists and endorsed by militants.

The BBC reports that Sudanese protesters attacked US, German and UK embassies in Khartoum and clashed with police on September 14. Three were reportedly killed.

Palestinians staged demonstrations in both the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israeli police, some on horseback, used stun grenades and made a number of arrests outside Jerusalem''s Old City as a few dozen demonstrators tried to march on the nearby U.S. consulate.

In Nablus, in the northern West Bank, several hundred people protested and burned an American flag, witnesses said.

At least 30,000 Palestinians took part in rallies across the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.

In Gaza City, American and Israeli flags were set alight, along with an effigy of the film''s supposed producer.

Protesters in Afghanistan set fire to an effigy of Obama and burned a U.S. flag after Friday prayers in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Directing their anger against an American Christian pastor who endorsed the film, tribal leaders also agreed to put a $100,000 bounty on his head.

About 10,000 people held a noisy protest in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka. They burned U.S. flags, chanted anti-U.S. slogans and demanded punishment for the offenders, but were stopped from marching to the U.S. embassy. There was no violence.

Thousands of Iranians held protests nationwide, and there were also rallies in Malaysia, Nigeria, Jordan, Kenya, Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan and Iraq, Reuters said.