Three gunmen attacked an old people’s home in the Yemeni port of Aden on Friday, killing 16 people including four Christian nuns from India, local officials and residents said.
The gunmen stormed into the home with rifles and opened fire, one local official said. Apart from the nuns, the dead included two Yemeni women working at the facility and a guard.
4 sisters from Missionaries of Charity killed in a terrorist attack on retirement home in YemenSunita Kumar, Spokesperson, Missionaries of Charity
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also expressed her condolence for the nuns. However she also mentioned that those nuns stayed or returned to Yemen despite the advice of the Ministry.
The motive of the gunmen was not immediately known. They fled after the attack, the official said.
Yemen’s embattled government is based in Aden but has struggled to impose its authority there since its forces, backed by Gulf Arab troops, expelled Iran-allied Houthi fighters who still control the country’s capital, Sanaa.
Once a cosmopolitan city home to thriving Hindu and Christian communities, Aden has gone from one of the world’s busiest ports as a key hub of the British empire, to a largely lawless backwater.
Aden’s small Christian population left long ago. Unknown assailants have previously vandalised a Christian cemetery, torched a church, and last year blew up an abandoned Catholic church.
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