DHAKA: Unidentified gunmen killed 16 staff members at a Missionaries of Charity home for the elderly in the Yemeni city of Aden on Friday, a local security official said.

The latest deadly attack shakes the southern port since a Saudi-led military coalition took it over last year, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The official said several militants stormed in after pretending to have come to visit the mother of one of them. They then started shooting people inside, he said.

Those killed appeared to be staff, including four nuns, who worked at the home in Aden’s northern Sheikh Othman district, the official said. The facility, run by a Roman Catholic group based in India, is called “Mother Teresa’s Home.”

“People usually are asleep or getting ready for [Friday] prayers at that time, and the attackers knew that people would not notice them and they would be able to escape,” the official said.

It wasn’t yet clear who was responsible, the local security official said. A motive wasn’t immediately clear, but extremists had previously targeted Christians in Aden. Unidentified attackers bombed a Catholic church in Aden in December.

Sunita Kumar, a spokeswoman for the Missionaries of Charity, said three gunmen carried out the attack in the morning during breakfast. One of the nuns they killed was Indian, while two were from Rwanda and one was from Kenya, she said. They killed all the support staff present, she said.

Reported missing was a priest from Bangalore in India who was visiting the facility in support of the nuns, Sunita Kumar said, and his fate was uncertain.

The Missionaries of Charity, founded by the late Roman Catholic missionary Mother Teresa, has operated in Aden since 1992. It has three other facilities in Yemen, Ms. Kumar said, including one in the capital San’a. The facilities serve the poor and haven’t been targeted in the past, she said.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted Friday that she was sorry the Indians involved didn’t heed official warnings for Indian citizens in Yemen to leave.

“I appeal to all Indians in such danger zones to please come back to India,” she tweeted.

The Saudi-led military coalition is using Aden as a base for a broader push to defeat Houthi rebels, who control the capital, and to restore President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.

BDST: 1152 HRS, MAR 05, 2016
RS