Caretaker
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SAN`A, Yemen — A suspected Muslim extremist shot and killed three American doctors and seriously wounded a U.S. pharmacist Monday at a Southern Baptist missionary hospital in southern Yemen, security officials said.
The suspected attacker, a 30-year-old Yemeni, was later arrested, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Americans have been repeatedly warned to take care in Yemen, a largely lawless country known as a haven for Muslim militants and the ancestral homeland of Usama bin Laden.
Officials said the gunman entered the complex of Jibla Baptist Hospital in the town of Jibla hiding a semiautomatic rifle under his jacket to make it resemble a child and then opened fire, killing the three doctors instantly.
He then headed to the hospital's pharmacy and opened fire, wounding the pharmacist, they said. Jibla is in Ibb province, 125 miles south of the capital, San`a.
According to the officials, one of the victims was the hospital director. The other two killed, both women, were the chief doctor and another doctor.
The names of the victims were not immediately available.
The official Yemeni news agency Saba quoted an Interior Ministry official as saying the 30-year-old assailant, whom he identified as Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, said under interrogation that he plotted Monday's attack in collaboration with Ali al-Jarallah, described by Yemeni officials as a Muslim extremist and member of Yemen's fundamentalist Islamic Reform Party, who was arrested for shooting dead a senior Yemeni leftist politician on Saturday.
The Interior Ministry official, who was not identified further, said without elaboration that security forces have doubled their efforts to protect foreigners.
The U.S. Embassy in San'a issued a brief statement, posted on its Web site, condemning the attack "on American citizens who have long been providing humanitarian services to Yemeni citizens at the Baptist hospital in Jibla."
"We call upon the Yemeni government to bring those responsible to justice," the U.S. Embassy statement said.
The embassy also asked Americans in Yemen to enhance their security and said it was requesting additional protection for them in addition to sending a team to Jibla to help with the investigation.
Yemeni security officials said a helicopter carrying a U.S. team that included doctors landed in Jibla shortly after the attack.
The Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, on its web site, described its 35-year-old hospital in Jibla as an 80-bed facility that "provides medical care for a wide area of the country." It said in addition to their work at the hospital, missionaries taught English and clinical skills at a nearby Yemeni nursing school.
The Associated Baptist Press reported earlier this year that the Richmond, Va.-based International Mission Board, to save money and sharpen its focus on evangelism, was preparing to transfer control of the hospital to a local charity founded by Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kerbi, who is a Canadian-trained doctor.
Under the proposal, Southern Baptist medical missionaries would continue working at the hospital. It was not immediately clear how far the transfer had progressed.
Impoverished, factionalized, predominantly Muslim Yemen has for years been a haven for wanted Muslim extremists. Bin Laden enlisted thousands of Yemenis to fight alongside the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in their U.S.-backed war against an occupation Soviet army in the 1980s. Many returned when the Soviets withdrew, and they are a powerful political force here.
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,74143,00.html
A mission of mercy destroyed without mercy by the sword of Islam.
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A Servant of Christ,
Drew
1 Tim. 3:
16: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh..
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