YEMEN: A Yemeni shot and killed three US missionaries and seriously wounded a fourth yesterday at a Southern Baptist hospital in the town of Jibla, 190 km from the Yemeni capital.
The 32-year-old assailant was arrested and identified as Ali Abdel Razak Kamel, a student at al-Iman Islamic university.
Concealing an automatic weapon beneath his coat, Mr Kamel entered a room where a meeting was in progress and opened fire, killing the hospital director, Mr William Koehn (60); the purchasing agent, Ms Kathleen Gariety (53); and Dr Martha Myers (57). Mr Kamel then went to the pharmacy where he shot Mr Donald Caswell (49) in the abdomen.
Mr Kamel confessed he belonged to Yemen's Islamic Jihad group and said he had shot the missionaries because they were preaching Christianity in a Muslim country. A Yemeni official said the gunman's aim was to "cleanse his religion and get closer to God".
During interrogation, Mr Kamel admitted he planned the attack with Mr Ali Jarallah, who was arrested for assassinating a senior Yemeni socialist politician, Mr Jarallah Omar, after he addressed the country's main Islamist Islah party's annual convention on Saturday. Mr Jarallah, an extremist member of the party, opposed the moderates who invited representatives of other parties to take part in the gathering. Sheikh Abdel Majid Zindawi, the ideologue of the Islah party, runs al-Iman university. The Yemeni police said they are looking for an extremist cell of five to eight persons.
Ms Wendy Neville, a spokeswoman for the Baptist International Mission Board, based in Richmond, Virginia, said the hospital had been operating for 35 years without incident and there had been no reason to believe it would be attacked. The hospital treats 40,000 patients annually, providing free care to those who cannot pay. Staff members also teach English and clinical skills at a nearby nursing school.
Yemen, a poor tribal country struggling to recover from a devastating civil war, is a haven for veterans of the US-sponsored war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Well-trained Yemeni "Afghans" have returned to their tribes and are a powerful political force in the country.
In October 2000, an explosive-laden boat rammed the USS Cole at the port of Aden, killing 17 sailors. This attack was blamed on al-Qaeda, the movement founded by Osama bin Laden, an "Afghan" of Yemeni origin held responsible for the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington. A year later, a similar boat struck a French oil tanker off the Yemeni coast, killing a member of the crew, and releasing 90,000 barrels of oil.
The CIA retaliated by deploying an unmanned aircraft to fire a missile at a vehicle carrying six alleged militants, including Ali Qaed Senyan Harithi, the man said to be responsible for the Cole mission. Angry tribesmen responded by setting off bombs in Sanaa and killing an official.
The US embassy in Sanaa condemned yesterday's attack and called upon the Yemeni authorities "to bring those responsible to justice". US citizens were warned in November not to travel to Yemen, a partner in the Bush administration's "war on terror".
