3 U.S. Doctors Killed by Gunman in Yemen

SANA, Yemen —  A suspected Muslim extremist shot and killed three American doctors at a missionary hospital in Yemen today, security officials said.

A fourth doctor, also an American, was wounded in the attack at the Jibla Missionary Hospital in Ibb province, 120 miles south of the capital, Sana, security sources said on condition of anonymity. Sources at the U.S. Embassy in Sana confirmed the victims were U.S. citizens.

The officials said the attacker was a suspected Muslim fundamentalist who entered the hospital’s complex and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle and a gun. He was arrested.

A Yemeni official described the gunman as an Islamic militant. After he was arrested, he allegedly told police that he had shot the two men and two women to “cleanse his religion and get closer to Allah.”

Yemeni security sources linked the so-far unidentified man to a member of an Islamist opposition party who killed a prominent opposition official last week.

The hospital was founded in 1967 by Southern Baptists James and June Young of Ruston, La.

According to a U.S. State Department report, the hospital has experienced occasional threats and harassment from local Islamic extremists who fear the hospital might be used to spread Christianity. Local religious extremists have reportedly harassed its Muslim employees.