A Casablanca court on Wednesday sentenced five members of Morocco's February 20 opposition movement to between eight and 10 months in jail for holding an "unauthorized demonstration," their lawyer said.

"Three were condemned to 10 months in prison, two to eight months and a young woman, who appeared in the court freely, got a six-month suspended sentence," Omar Benjelloun told Agence France Presse.

Libyan security guards were killed and wounded trying to defend U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens during the attack in Benghazi in which the U.S. diplomat died, a Libyan U.N. envoy said Wednesday.

Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's deputy U.N. ambassador, told reporters that up to 10 Libyan security personnel were casualties of the attack on Tuesday. "Some of them have been killed at the start of the attack," he said.

The Palestinian Hamas movement on Wednesday condemned an anti-Muslim film that has sparked deadly riots, as a handful of Gazans burned U.S. flags to protest against the movie.

The low-budget film, "Innocence of Muslims," portrays Muslims as immoral and gratuitously violent. It sparked protests in Egypt and Libya, where rioters attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing the ambassador and three others.

The United States is deploying a U.S. Marine anti-terrorism team to Libya to bolster security after a deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, a U.S. defense official said Wednesday.

"The Marines are sending a FAST (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team) team to Libya," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Western countries are not considering military intervention in Syria while Russia and China oppose such action, British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters in Doha on Wednesday.

"So long as two major powers are actively opposed to any intervention in Syria, that is a major impediment to Western nations contemplating such action," said Hammond, in a clear reference to Moscow and Beijing.

An Arab League diplomat announced on Wednesday that U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi would head for Damascus on Thursday and meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad the following day, but gave no further details.

The international envoy, replacing former U.N. chief Kofi Annan who quit in August over U.N. Security Council divisions on the conflict that has gripped Syria for nearly 18 months, kicked off his peace mission with talks in Cairo.

Iran has condemned a film insulting Islam that sparked a deadly protest in Libya killing the U.S. ambassador, while Iranian media reported an anti-U.S. protest over the movie would take place in Tehran on Thursday.

A foreign ministry statement slammed the film, an amateur production made in the United States, as "repulsive" and said the U.S. government's "silence" encouraged such offences to Islam.

Egypt's government on Wednesday denounced a film deemed offensive to Islam that sparked fury in Egypt and Libya, calling on Egyptians to exercise restraint.

"The film is offensive to the Prophet and immoral," the cabinet said in a statement read by Prime Minister Hisham Qandil at a news conference.

Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday called for nationwide protests Friday after a film deemed offensive to Islam sparked a deadly attack in Libya and furious protests in Cairo.

The Brotherhood calls "for peaceful protests on Friday outside all the main mosques in all of Egypt's provinces to denounce offenses to religion and to the Prophet," the Muslim Brotherhood's Secretary General Mahmud Hussein said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Yemen's capital on Wednesday to denounce violence a day after a failed attempt to assassinate the defense minister killed 12 people.

Protesters answering a call to demonstrate "against terrorism and assassinations" also slammed ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh whom they accuse of fuelling violence, and called for an end to his immunity from prosecution.