Narinder Nanu / AFP - Getty Images

A file photo taken on May 19, 2011 shows Pakistani Federal Railways Minister Haji Ghulam Ahmed Bilour addressing the media in Amritsar.

A Pakistani government minister on Saturday announced a $100,000 bounty for the killing of the person who produced an online film that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad.

Federal Minister for Railways Ghulam Ahmed Bilour also asked the Taliban and al-Qaida to extend support to the would-be killer.

Speaking at a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club, the federal minister said whoever is responsible for blasphemy deserves death.

"The American who produced the sacrilegious film in the U.S. is also liable to death and we will shower dollars on the one who killed the blasphemer. If members of the banned militant organizations kill the maker of the blasphemous movie, they will also be rewarded," Bilour announced.

He called for legislation to have the anti-blasphemy law at the global level so that no one could hurt the religious emotions of the Muslims in the name of the freedom of expression.

He said the situation would remain tense until anti-blasphemy law was enacted at the world level.

Bilour condemned the work of the filmmaker, saying it distressed the Muslims across the world.  However, he also condemned the violence during the protests on Friday, which was declared a national holiday in honor of Muhammad, saying it could defame Muslims and their religion.

Bilour said the government had already announced that the police and other law-enforcers would give protesters the opportunity to peacefully condemn the filmmaker and would not crack down on them with batons.

Many Muslims denouncing anti-Islam film decry violent protests, too

At least 15 people were killed and shops and businesses were damaged on Friday during Muslim protests in Pakistan.

The film in question, produced in the U.S. and posted on the Internet under several titles including "Innocence of Muslims," portrays the prophet as a fraud, womanizer and child molester.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan has run television spots, one featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying the government had nothing to do with the film. 

Pakistan had declared Friday a "Day of Love" for the Prophet and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said an attack on Islam's founder was "an attack on the whole 1.5 billion Muslims." 

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Dozens of people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, have been killed this month in violence linked to the film, which also has renewed debate over freedom of expression in the U.S. and in Europe.

Protests continued in the Muslim world on Saturday. Scores of people were injured in clashes in Bangladesh's capital between police and hundreds of demonstrators. In Pakistan, more than 1,500 people, including women and children, rallied in the capital.

Thousands of people also protested Saturday in Nigeria's largest city, Kano. The crowd marched from a mosque to the palace of the Emir of Kano, the region's top spiritual leader for Muslims.

About 200 students in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir, chanted "Down with America" and "Long live Islam" in a peaceful protest. Some carried a placard that read, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger."

NBC's Mushtaq Yusufzai in Pakistan and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.

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France said it would temporarily close its embassies and schools in 20 countries Friday after a satirical magazine in Paris published insulting cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, a move it fears will add “fuel to the fire” of global tensions over an anti-Islam film.

The French government, which had urged the weekly not to print the cartoons, said it was shutting embassies and schools as a precaution on Friday, when protests sometimes break out after Muslim prayers.

“We have indeed decided as a precautionary measure to close our premises, embassies, consulates, cultural centers and schools,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters. Riot police were also sent to the offices of the weekly magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby called the drawings outrageous but said those who were offended by them should "use peaceful means to express their firm rejection".

Tunisia's ruling Islamist party, Ennahda, condemned what it called an act of "aggression" against Muhammad but urged Muslims not to fall into a trap intended to "derail the Arab Spring and turn it into a conflict with the West".

In the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles, one person was slightly hurt when two masked men threw a small explosive device through the window of a kosher supermarket. Police said it was too early to link the incident to the cartoons. One small local Muslim group filed a legal complaint against the weekly but there were no reports of reaction on the streets of France.

The acting head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said French courts should deal with the case as firmly as it dealt with a magazine that published topless photographs of the U.K.'s Duchess of Cambridge.

The publication came amid widespread outrage over a crude, provocative film, made by anti-Islam campaigners in California, that mocked the Prophet and ignited days of deadly protests including an attack in Libya in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed.

The front-page cartoon had the figure in a wheelchair saying "You mustn't mock'' under the headline "Untouchable 2," a reference to a hugely popular French movie about a paralyzed rich white man and his black assistant.

US Muslims walk tightrope, denouncing both violence and anti-Islam film

Charlie Hebdo's Paris offices were fire bombed last November after it published a mocking caricature of Muhammad.

Many Muslims consider any representation of Allah or Muhammad offensive.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius criticized the magazine's move.

"Is it relevant and intelligent in this environment to add fuel to the fire? The answer is no,'' Fabius told France Info radio. "I'm very worried... and when I saw this I immediately issued instructions for special security precautions to be taken in all the countries where it could be a problem.''

The government has called for restraint over the cartoons, restating the principles of free speech in France and urging those shocked by the images to take action through the courts.

Clinton to hold closed briefing for lawmakers on rising anti-US violence

Muslim leaders in France, which has Europe's largest Muslim population, have appealed for calm.

Salafist Muslims in Paris have already called for a protest this Saturday at Trocadero, near the Eiffel Tower, against the California-made film.

However, French authorities have refused to authorize any demonstration.

A small group of about 100 were prevented by riot police from approaching the U.S. Embassy in the center of Paris last Saturday.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the authorities had rejected a request to hold a march.

"There is no reason for us to allow conflicts that do not concern France to enter our country,'' Ayrault told RTL radio.

Muslim Brotherhood: Respect beliefs of others
Muslim leaders criticized the magazine’s cartoons as another Western insult to their faith and urged France's government to take action.

"We reject and condemn the French cartoons that dishonor the Prophet and we condemn any action that defames the sacred according to people's beliefs," the acting head of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Essam Erian, said, according to Reuters.

Erian added that the French judiciary should deal with the issue as firmly as it had handled the case against the magazine, Closer, which published topless pictures of Britain's Duchess of Cambridge, the wife of Prince William.

"If the case of Kate (the duchess) is a matter of privacy, then the cartoons are an insult to a whole people. The beliefs of others must be respected," he told Reuters.

Erian also spoke out against any violent reaction from Muslims but said peaceful protests were justified.

Mahmoud Ghozlan, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, welcomed French government criticism of the cartoons but said that French law should deal with insults against Islam in the same way as it deals with Holocaust denial.

"If anyone doubts the Holocaust happened, they are imprisoned, yet if anyone insults the Prophet, his companions or Islam, the most (France) does is to apologize in two words. It is not fair or logical," he told Reuters.

In Lebanon, leading Salafist cleric Sheikh Nabil Rahim said the cartoons were extremely insulting and could lead to more violence.

"Of course it will anger people further. It will raise tensions that were already dangerously high," he said, according to Reuters.

He accused those involved of trying to provoke a clash of civilizations, not dialogue. "We will try to keep things managed and peaceful, but these things easily get out of hand. I fear there could more targeting of foreigners, and this is why I wish they would not persist with these provocations."

An official in Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church said the move was a deliberate provocation. It showed "some international powers" wanted violence to escalate in Egypt so that the country would not develop economically, the official, who asked not to be named, said without elaborating. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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BENGHAZI, Libya -- U.S. troops dispatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue Ambassador Chris Stevens and other diplomats in Benghazi ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters.

Accounts of the mayhem at the U.S. consulate, where the ambassador and another diplomat died after a chaotic protest over a film insulting to Islam, remain patchy. But two Libyan officials, including the commander of a security force that escorted the U.S. rescuers, said a later assault on a supposedly safe refuge for the diplomats appeared professionally executed.

Miscommunication that understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue -- there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected -- also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.

Capt. Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man U.S. Marine force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the Marines had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.

"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries."

Obeidi's Libya Shield Brigade was formed by civilians during last year's U.S.-backed uprising against Moammar Gadhafi and is now part of the ad hoc government militia forces which the fledgling democratic administration uses to keep order.

Slideshow: U.S. posts attacked in Libya and Egypt

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The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed after protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad stormed the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

Launch slideshow

Other Libyan officials cited the possible involvement of former soldiers still loyal to Gadhafi's family or Islamist fighters, some of whom have trained and fought in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have noted it was "complex attack". Several Libyan officials and witnesses said an initial demonstration at the consulate appeared to be largely unarmed, though some elements of an Islamist militia were spotted.

Related: What's known about the consulate attack

At some point, the crowd became incensed, believing they were under attack from within the consulate, many fetched weapons and the consular villa ended up in flames, with most of the Americans fleeing to the safe house after two, including Stevens, had been fatally injured.

'Six mortars' on path to villa
Of the eight American troops who had come from Tripoli, one was killed and two were wounded, Obeidi said. A Libyan deputy interior minister said a second American was also killed in the attack on the safe house. It was not clear if this was a diplomat or one of the consulate's original security detail.

"It began to rain down on us," Obeidi told Reuters, describing the moment the attack began -- just as the Libyan security force was starting up the 10 pickup trucks and sedans they had brought to ferry the Americans to the airport.

"About six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa," he said. "During this firing, one of the Marines whom I had brought with me was wounded and fell to the ground.

"As I was dragging the wounded Marine to safety, some Marines who were located on the roof of the villa as snipers shouted and the rest of the Marines all hit the ground.

"A mortar hit the side of the house. One of the Marines from the roof went flying and fell on top of us."

A senior U.S. diplomat -- not Ambassador Stevens, who Libyan officials said died at a local hospital of the effects of smoke -- urged pushing ahead with the evacuation, Obeidi said.

But he had a transport problem. Having been told to expect 10 Americans and having found 37, Obeidi did not have enough vehicles to break out, despite having one heavy anti-aircraft gun mounted on a pickup truck. 

"I was being bombarded by calls from all over the country by Libyan government officials who wanted me to hurry and get them out," he said. "But I told them that we were in such difficult circumstances and that I needed more men and more cars."

Eventually dozens more vehicles were dispatched from pro-government militia brigades and, with the sun rising, the convoy headed back to the airport where an aircraft flew a first group of U.S. personnel out to the Libyan capital.

Libyan Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif said Stevens and another diplomat died in the first series of incidents around the consulate, while the other two Americans died during the attempt to evacuate from the safe house to the airport.

"(The ambassador) died as a result of suffocation by the fumes of the fire inside the embassy and one was also killed by gunfire before around 37 people were moved to a place we thought was safe," Sharif told Reuters in Benghazi.

Speaking of the rescue mission, he said: "A team of commandos arrived by air and went to a farm which we thought was a secret location. Once they got there, they came under heavy fire from heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, which resulted in the death of two others."

He estimated that a dozen or more Americans were hurt.

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Updated at 5:22 a.m. ET: A State Department officer was killed after armed protesters stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, furious about an amateur video that has been viewed as insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed the American's death in a statement on Tuesday evening.

"Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet," Clinton said in the statement. "The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others."

The attack left much of the consulate burned, witnesses said, and came hours after demonstrators in Egypt climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to protest the video.

In Benghazi, protesters from various groups joined together to pull down the American flag in the embassy's courtyard and tried to raise a black flag with the words: "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger."

Once the U.S. flag was hauled down, protesters tore it up, with some showing off small pieces to television cameras. Then others burned pieces of the flag before riot police arrived. Most of the 2,000 in the crowd later left. Some reports said warning shots were fired.

The video, clips of which are online, shows a portrayal of the prophet having sex and calling for massacres, the AP reported. It was allegedly produced in the United States.

Egyptian media have been reporting on it for several days, with ultraconservative clerics going on air to denounce it. 

"This movie must be banned immediately and an apology should be made ... This is a disgrace," said 19-year-old Ismail Mahmoud, a member of the so-called "ultras" soccer supporters who played a big role in the uprising that brought down Hosni Mubarak last year.

Esam Omran Al-Fetori / Reuters

The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the U.S., on Sept. 11.

Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad to be offensive.

Filmmaker calls Islam 'a cancer'
Sam Bacile, a 56-year-old California real estate developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew and who said he produced, directed and wrote the two-hour film, "Innocence of Muslims," said he had not anticipated such a furious reaction.

Speaking by phone to the AP from an undisclosed location, Bacile, who went into hiding Tuesday, remained defiant, saying Islam is a cancer and that he intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

Bacile said he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world.

"Islam is a cancer, period," he repeatedly said in a solemn, accented tone.

Though Bacile was apologetic about the American who was killed in Benghazi, he blamed lax embassy security and the perpetrators of the violence.

"I feel the security system (at the embassies) is no good," said Bacile. "America should do something to change it."

Bacile said the film was produced in English and he does not know who dubbed it in Arabic. The full film has been shown once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year, he said.

Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-born Christian in the United States known for his anti-Islam views, told the AP from Washington that he was promoting the video on his website and on certain TV stations, which he did not identify. Early reports suggested Sadek had made the film, but this no longer appears to be the case.

Both depicted the film as showing how Coptic Christians are oppressed in Egypt, though it goes well beyond that to ridicule Muhammad — a reflection of their contention that Islam as a religion is inherently oppressive.

"The main problem is I am the first one to put on the screen someone who is (portraying) Muhammad. It makes them mad," Bacile said. "But we have to open the door. After 9/11 everybody should be in front of the judge, even Jesus, even Muhammad."

Romney slams Obama over attacks on US officials in Libya, Egypt

For several days, Egyptian media have been reporting on the video, playing some excerpts from it and blaming Sadek for it, with ultraconservative clerics going on air to denounce it.

Medhat Klada, a representative of Coptic Christian organizations in Europe, said Sadek's views are not representative of expatriate Copts.

"He is an extremist ... We don't go down this road. He has incited the people (in Egypt) against Copts," he said, speaking from Switzerland. "We refuse any attacks on religions because of a moral position."

But he said he was concerned about the backlash from angry Islamists, saying their protest only promotes the movie. "They don't know dialogue and they think that Islam will be offended from a movie."

An Egyptian state website carried a statement by Egypt's Coptic Orthodox church condemning what it said were moves by some Christian Copts living abroad "to finance the production of a film insulting Prophet Mohammad."

About a tenth of Egypt's 83 million people are Christians.

Embassy condemns those who offend religious feelings
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo had put out a statement earlier on Tuesday condemning those who hurt the religious feelings of Muslims or followers of any other religions.

Mohammed Abu Zaid / AP

Protesters destroy an American flag pulled down from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, on Tuesday.

"We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others," the embassy said in its statement.

"Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy," it stated, adding that it condemned the efforts by "misguided individuals" to hurt the feelings of Muslims. 

One slogan scrawled on the walls of the embassy, a fortress-like structure that is near Tahrir Square where Egyptians revolted against Mubarak, said: "If your freedom of speech has no limits, may you accept our freedom of action."

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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