CAIRO — Anti-American violence erupted across the Muslim world for a third day, with enraged protesters scaling the walls of U.S. embassies in Sudan and Tunisia and hard-pressed police waging street battles with demonstrators in several Middle East capitals.

Protesters tore down the flag at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, the Tunisian capital, and set a nearby American school afire. In Khartoum, Sudan's capital, demonstrators breached an embassy wall and raised a black flag of militant Islam as police struggled to push them back. They also set fire to a building at the German Embassy compound.

At least four protesters were reported killed — two in Tunisia, one in Yemen and one in the Libyan capital, Tripoli — during attacks on American fast-food franchises Hardee's and KFC. Armed Islamic militants attacked a multinational peacekeeping base in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, setting vehicles on fire and wounding at least three Colombian peacekeepers.

Triggered in large part by an amateurish video clip portraying the prophet Muhammad as a womanizer and child molester, the protests have strained U.S. relations with Egypt and raised tension in Libya, where an armed attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Two Marines were killed Friday when Afghan militants armed with rocket propelled grenades and small arms breached the perimeter of the main U.S. Marine base in southern Afghanistan, following a rocket and mortar attack on the base that is shared with British forces.

The protests were a reminder of the passions unleashed by the “Arab Spring,” which toppled authoritarian regimes across the region, the unfulfilled longings of millions for a better life and the weaknesses of new governments still trying to find their footing. New leaders such as Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi find themselves in a bind.

State Department officials said Friday that security services in some countries responded sluggishly and had to be pushed to step up protection of U.S. diplomats and property. But spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also softened the criticism, saying that in several cases post-authoritarian security forces weren't used to taking the initiative.

At Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, President Barack Obama attended a ceremony as the bodies of the Americans killed in Libya arrived on U.S. soil.

“The United States of America will never retreat from the world,” Obama told friends and families of the men. “We will never stop working for the dignity and freedom that every person deserves, whatever their creed, whatever their faith.... That's the spirit that sets us apart from other nations.” The caskets arrived at the base shortly after 2 p.m. and were greeted by a Marine team that walked them to a hangar. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood in front of the caskets and briefly recalled the lives of the four men. When the ceremony concluded, the Marines placed the flag-draped caskets into their hearses, waiting to deliver them to Delaware's Dover Air Force base and to their families.

(Abdellatif is a special correspondent. Paul Richter of the Tribune Washington Bureau in Washington, David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times in Durham, N.C., Christi Parsons of the Tribune Washington Bureau at Andrews Air Force Base and special correspondent Radhouane Addala in Tunis contributed to this report.)
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