President Barack Obama on Saturday rejected any denigration of Islam, but insisted there was no excuse for attacks on U.S. embassies as angry protests over an obscure, anti-Muslim film spread to Australia.

"I have made it clear that the United States has a profound respect for people of all faiths," Obama said in his weekly radio address.

"Yet there is never any justification for violence .... There is no excuse for attacks on our embassies and consulates,” he added.

Anti-American protests have swept the Muslim world in response to the film, which insults the Prophet Muhammad.


The death toll as a result of violence during protests in the Middle East and North Africa Friday rose from seven to nine with Tunisian officials saying four people -- rather than two as stated earlier -- died there. Three were killed by gunfire and the other died after being hit by two police cars, a senior hospital official told Reuters.

An attack on the U.S. Consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others this week.

A day after Obama led a somber ceremony marking the return of the bodies of the Americans killed in Libya, Obama acknowledged that a surge of anti-American violence in the Middle East is disturbing.

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The Pentagon is sending Marines to beef up security at the U.S. embassy in Sudan, following similar reinforcements to Libya and Yemen.

The Libyan attack and the U.S.-directed outrage have raised questions about Obama's handling of the so-called Arab Spring, a series of revolutions that have unseated entrenched authoritarian governments.

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The turbulence in the Middle East has had ripples in a tight U.S. presidential election, with Obama's Republican challenger Mitt Romney saying Obama has weakened U.S. authority around the world.