SANAA, Dec 30: A Yemeni shot dead three American doctors and critically wounded a US pharmacist on Monday at a missionary hospital in the south of the country.

Yemeni officials named the gunman as 32-year-old Abed Abdel Razzak Kamel and said he was a militant who had told police after his arrest that he had shot the two men and two women to “cleanse his religion and get closer to Allah”.

The US embassy confirmed the victims were US citizens and said they were working at the Jibla Baptist hospital in Ebb province, some 170kms south of the capital, Sanaa.

“The gunman confessed to being a member of (Yemen’s) Islamic Jihad group and said he shot the Americans because they were preaching Christianity in a Muslim country,” one Yemeni official said.

Witnesses said Kamel had entered the hospital posing as a patient and then opened fire on the four Americans at the outpatient clinic when it was his turn to receive treatment.

Anti-US sentiment has been running high in many Arab countries in recent months, prompted by anger at Washington’s support for Israel, the US-led attack on Afghanistan and a probable invasion of Iraq. US officials declined to name the victims.—Reuters / AFP