SANAA/WASHINGTON, 31 December 2002 — A Yemeni gunman shot dead three Americans — a doctor and two others — and critically wounded a US pharmacist yesterday at a missionary hospital in the south of the country.

The alleged gunman was last night being questioned by Yemeni security forces after he was arrested following the attack at the missionary-run hospital. The gunman is said to have concealed a semi-automatic gun under his clothes, pretending he was carrying a child, before he opened fire and shot the missionaries in the head.

Yemeni officials named the gunman as 32-year-old Ali Abdel Razzak Kamel and said he confessed to being a member of (Yemen’s) Islamic Jihad group. The accused said he shot the Americans because they were preaching Christianity in a Muslim country, according to one Yemeni official.

The US Embassy confirmed the victims were US citizens and said they were working at the hospital in Ebb province, some 170 km south of the capital Sanaa.

The US-based Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board said a hospital administrator, a purchasing agent, and a doctor, Martha Myers, were killed in the attack in the southern Yemeni town of Jibla. Witnesses said Kamel had entered the hospital posing as a patient then opened fire on the four Americans at the outpatient clinic when it was his turn to receive treatment.

Yemeni officials said local authorities were conducting widescale arrests of suspected militants and the army had erected roadblocks along the main highways.

A helicopter carrying US diplomats from the embassy in Sanaa landed in the hospital compound after the attack, security sources said. US Embassy public affairs officer John Balian told AFP the embassy team would “help in the investigation of this crime.”

The embassy issued a statement calling on the Yemeni government “to bring those responsible to justice.”

Balian added: “It is not known if he acted alone or with others.”

“We are advising American citizens in Yemen to enhance their personal security and are requesting additional protection for American citizens in Yemen,” the statement said. “We condemn the attack on US citizens. We have long been providing humanitarian services to Yemeni citizens at the Baptist hospital in Jibla,” it said.

“The American Embassy in Sanaa extends its deepest condolences to the victims and their families. Embassy personnel have been sent to Jibla to assist American citizens there.”

Kamel was believed to be a student at Yemen’s Al-Iman university which is run by controversial Al-Islah party thinker Sheikh Abul Majid Al-Zindani and was closed briefly last year.

He was thought to know Ali Al-Jarallah who shot dead the deputy leader of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) at a conference organized by Al-Islah in Sanaa on Saturday and went to the same university.

Sources close to the investigation said Kamel had confessed to being one of five militants charged with carrying out five operations, one of which was the assassination of the YSP’s Jarallah Omar.

Anti-US sentiment has been running high in many Arab countries in recent months, prompted by anger at Washington’s support for Israel, the US-led war against Afghanistan and a possible attack against Iraq.

Hospital administrator Julie Toma told CNN from Jibla she believed it was an isolated incident. She said she believed the shooting was linked to preparations to hand the American hospital — which was set up in Yemen in 1964/5 — over to a Yemeni administration. (The Independent)