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Missionaries of Charity attack in Aden

Part of Yemen Civil War and Aden unrest
Location Aden, Yemen
Date 4 March 2016 (2016-03-04)
Target Christians
Weapons Firearms
Deaths 16
Perpetrators Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
No. of participants
4

The Missionaries of Charity attack in Aden was a mass murder crime committed by ISIS gunmen inside a home for older people in Aden, Yemen on 4 March 2016.

16 people were killed including four Catholic nuns. An Indian priest, Tom Ozhonaniel, was kidnapped. The identities of the attackers are unknown. Media outlets published a statement attributed to Ansar al-Sharia, one of the active jihadist organizations in the country, denies any relation to the incident.

The Times of India posited the attackers belonged to the Yemen-based affiliate of the Islamic State (ISIS) group.

Christian presence in Yemen goes back to the fourth century AD to hold a number of Himyarites believers due to the efforts of Theophilos the Indian. Currently, there are no official statistics on their numbers, but estimated at between 3,000 and 25,000 people, and most of them are refugees or temporary residents.

Freedom of worship, conversion from Islam and establishing facilities dedicated for worship are not recognized in the Constitution or as laws or legal rights. At the same time, Wahabbi activities linked to Al-Islah were being facilitated, financed and encouraged from multiple fronts including the Ministry of Endowments and Guidance, which says that its tasks "to contribute to the development of Islamic awareness and circulation of the publication Education and Islamic morals and consolidation in the life of public and private citizens."

The Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, have worked in Aden since 1992, and the order has three other centers in Sana'a, Taiz and Hodeidah. Three Catholic nuns were killed in Hodeidah in 1998, two from India and the third from the Philippines, at the hands of a member of Al-Islah Abdullah al-Nashiri, arguing that they were calling for conversion to Christianity. In 2002, three Americans were killed in Baptists Hospital at the hands of another Al-Islah member named Abed Abdul Razak Kamel. Survivors say that the hospital was "a political football" often raised by Islamists (Al-Islah), who talked about it in mosques and hospital workers describing Hospital workers as "spies". But they emphasized that these opinions are a minority among Yemenis.


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