The assault on the US Consulate in Libya's Benghazi city was a "deliberate and organised terrorist attack" by groups affiliated with or sympathetic to al-Qaeda, America's top intelligence agency has said.
This is a significant turnaround from the previous version. The Obama Administration had earlier said this was a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam video.
The attack resulted in the death of four Americans including the US Ambassador to Libya.
"As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organised terrorist attack carried out by extremists," Shawn Turner, the spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, said in a statement.
"It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with or sympathetic to al-Qaeda," he said.
The statement comes days after the US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, had termed the attack as a result of the spontaneous protest.
