A wave of furious anti-Western protests against a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad abated on Saturday, Sept. 15 but U.S. policy in the Muslim world remained overshadowed by 13 minutes of amateurish video on the Internet.

Washington ordered family members and non-essential staff to leave the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, which was attacked on Friday, after Sudan turned down its request to send Marines to bolster security.

In addition, it pulled non-essential personnel out of its embassy in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, also attacked on Friday, and urged American citizens to leave the city.

Marine platoons have been sent to U.S. missions in Yemen and Libya since the unrest erupted.

Elsewhere, riot police stormed into Cairo's Tahrir Square and rounded up hundreds of people after four days of clashes and demands from protesters for the U.S. ambassador to be expelled.

Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority denounced the attacks on diplomats and embassies across the Middle East as un-Islamic.

But the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda applauded the killings of U.S. diplomats in Libya and urged Muslims to kill more, calling the video posted on the Internet another chapter in the "crusader wars" against Islam.

A California man convicted of bank fraud, who has denied reports that he was involved in the film's production, was taken in for questioning by officers investigating possible probation violations stemming from the making of the film, Reuters reported.