Gunmen attacks elderly care home in Yemen, 17 killed

Seventeen people, including four Catholic nuns, were killed in Aden on Friday morning when armed men attacked a care home for the elderly run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Six Ethiopians, a Yemeni cook and Yemeni guards were also killed, said Khaled Haidar, whose brother Radwan was among the dead. He said his family was the first to arrive at the home in Aden’s Al Sheikh Othman district following the attack. It was not yet clear who was responsible for the killings, but ISIL and Al Qaeda have carried out a string of attacks in the southern Yemeni city in recent months. Pope Francis expressed sadness, during his Sunday mass at the Vatican, describing the attack as an “act of senseless and diabolical violence.”
Graphic pictures after the cut

An Aden security official told The National that four extremist militants had knocked on the door of the home and told the guard that they wanted to visit their mother who was a resident.
“When the guard opened the door [the militants] burst in and killed the guard ... [before] ... firing on the elderly [residents] and Indian nuns at random,” the official said.
He said one Indian nun had survived by hiding inside a cold room used to store medicines.
Mr Haidar said he had spoken to the nun, who was crying and shaking. His family handed her over to resistance fighters responsible for security in Al Sheikh Othman district, he added. A doctor at the Republican hospital told The National that some of the dead had arrived with their hands tied behind their backs. Most had been shot in the head. Paramedics said they expected the death toll to rise as some of the wounded had serious injuries. Officials and medics were unable to provide a figure for the number of people injured in the attack. Local religious leader Sheikh Mohammed Mahboob blamed the Aden attack on ISIL, which considers Christians to be heretics.
“The Islamic State fighters have a wrong understanding of Islam,” he said.