Suspects arrested in Yemen over attack on Aden old folks’ home

Yemeni security forces have arrested a number of suspects in connection with an attack on a senior citizens’ home in Aden in March in which at least 16 people were killed, including four Indian nuns, a spokesman said on Thursday.

His statement said one of the suspects had confessed to the attack, in which four people supposedly visiting their mother stormed the compound and opened fire. An Indian priest was kidnapped, and his fate is still unknown.

The motive for the attack was unclear but President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi called it an act of terrorism.

The spokesman described those arrested as a “gang” but gave no details on their number or motives, and said the search for suspects continued.

Yemen’s Saudi-backed government has been forced out of the capital Sanaa by Houthi militias and is now based in Aden, but struggles to impose its authority even there.

Once a cosmopolitan global seaport, Aden has become a backwater as result of the civil war, and more recently a conflict zone, its Christian community largely driven away.