Pope Francis has condemned as “diabolical” a jihadist attack on a care home in which 16 people, including four Roman Catholic nuns, were killed.
Six gunman, thought to be from Islamic State, entered the home run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in the Yemeni port city of Aden.
Posing as relatives of patients, they moved between rooms tying up victims then shooting them in the head. A nun who survived told residents that she hid inside a storeroom fridge after hearing a guard shouting, “run, run”.
Witnesses described the screams of elderly patients echoing through the corridors. Among the dead were four Indian nuns, two Yemeni nurses, eight patients and a guard.
Pope Francis called for an end to the ten-month conflict in Yemen, which has allowed groups such as Isis and al-Qaeda to flourish. “Pope Francis was shocked and profoundly saddened to learn of the killing,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, describing it as an act of “senseless and diabolical violence”.
Advertisement
The Pope urged “all parties to lay down their arms and take up the path of dialogue”. He called the slain nuns martyrs in a Sunday sermon, saying they “gave their blood for the Church” and were victims of “this indifference of globalisation”.
Yemen has been torn apart by fighting since last March when a Saudi-backed coalition launched a bombing campaign to reinstate President Hadi, forced from power by the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group. Fighting intensified in August when Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies launched a ground invasion to re-take the capital, Sanaa.
Aden, the temporary seat of the embattled Yemeni government, has particularly suffered from terror attacks. On Saturday, gunman killed an Aden-based police colonel and his aide. Last month, an Isis suicide bomber, disguised in military uniform, killed 15 Yemeni soldiers at a military camp.
No group claimed responsibility for Friday’s care home attack but local officials blamed Isis. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which controls territory around Aden, denied any links to the shooting, saying: “This is not our way of fighting.”
A Yemeni security source, using an Arabic acronym for Isis, said: “We are aware that no group has yet claimed the criminal attack . . . but information points to the involvement of Daesh.”
Advertisement
Fides, the Vatican missionary news agency, said that the home’s mother superior survived the rampage but an Indian priest was still missing. Officials said he was abducted by the attackers.
Sushma Swaraj, India’s foreign minister, named the cleric as Father Tom Uzhunnalil, 56, and said that officials were working to secure his release.
Nearly 3,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict which has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in terms of numbers, according to the UN.
International aid groups have pulled most of their foreign staff from Yemen but continue to operate on a reduced basis through local employees.