U.S. and Libyan officials will come together Thursday in Tripoli to mourn U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans killed in an assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
The attack, and protests over an anti-Islamic U.S. movie, have put U.S. and Western embassies around the world on high alert. But Stevens believed he had been marked for death for months, CNN reported.
Noting the increased presence of Al Qaeda in Libya, Stevens said his name was on the terror group's hit list, a source close to him told the network.
Protests over the film "The Innocence of Muslims" — which blasphemes the Prophet Muhammed by depicting him as a bumbling child molester — raged outside the consulate on Sept. 11.
National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen said the demonstrations provided a cover for an "opportunistic attack" on the U.S. mission.
Ambassador Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEAL security guards Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died when terrorists blasted the consulate with rocket-propelled grenades.
Dozens of others have been killed in protests over "The Innocence of Muslims."
France increased security at its embassies in Muslim countries — and will keep them closed Friday — after the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo added fuel to the fire by publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammed.
The magazine's offices were firebombed last year when it engaged in Muslim-baiting humor by putting out an issue "guest-edited" by the Prophet.
The new issue was published Wednesday, and later in the day a kosher grocery in suburban Paris was firebombed, but officials haven't yet linked the attack to either Charlie Hebdo's cartoons or "The Innocence of Muslims."
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