Muslim extremist kills three, injures one in attack on Southern Baptist hospital
Yemeni authorities have arrested Abed Abdel Razzak Kamel (also referred to as Ali Abdulrazzak al-Kamel), a self-described Islamic jihadist from the province of Damar, for killing three American missionaries at the Jibla Baptist Hospital (map).

"The gunman confessed to being a member of the Islamic Jihad group and said he shot the Americans because they were preaching Christianity," an unnamed official told Reuters. (The Yemeni Islamic Jihad is unrelated to the Palestinian movement of the same name). Kamel, the official said, told police he attacked the missionaries to "cleanse his religion and get closer to God."

Reports say that Kamel, a student at the radical al-Iman university (where "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh also was indoctrinated in militant Islam), entered the hospital posing either as a patient or as a relative (or possibly both), with a fake bandage on his hand and his Kalashnikov assault rifle wrapped up like a baby. He then entered the hospital's administrative wing, where he interrupted a morning meeting, shooting the hospital director, chief doctor, and a nurse, all in the head. They died immediately.

How pharmacist Donald W. Caswell was shot in the abdomen is a matter of some dispute. Some reports say Kamel found him in another room. Others say he was shot while fleeing the conference room attack. Jacqueline Lawson-Smith, the British charges d'affaires to Yemen, told the BBC (video) that the 49-year-old Levelland, Texas, native was injured while tackling Kamel as the gunman tried to escape.

"We just thank the Lord that he is alive," Caswell's father told the Associated Press. "He's alert and talking and everything's going ...