HIGHLIGHTS Police Arrests Assailant Described by Yemeni Officials as an Islamic Extremist|| However, an American Hospital Official Says Attack May Have Been An Isolated Incident Specifically Related to The Running of The Clinic|| Salih Condemns Attack & Bush Deplores Murders||STORY: A gunman shot dead three American staff at a Baptist mission hospital in Yemen Monday.

Police quickly arrested a 30-year-old man they said was an Islamist militant for killing a doctor and two of her colleagues. A fourth American, a pharmacist, was wounded.

Abed Abdel Razzak Kamel entered the provincial clinic at Jibla posing a patient, witnesses said.

The Southern Baptist International Mission Board named the dead as physician Martha Myers, 57, of Montgomery, Alabama, hospital administrator William Koehn, 60, of Arlington, Texas, and Kathleen Gariety, 53, of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a purchasing agent. Wounded pharmacist Donald Caswell, 49, of Levelland, Texas, was recovering after an operation to remove two bullets.

The gunman smuggled a rifle into the hospital concealed in his clothing and cradling it like a baby, president Jerry Rankin said at Mission Board's headquarters in Richmond, Virginia.

ASSAILANT IS MEMBER OF ISLAMIC JIHAD GROUP

A Yemeni official said Kamel told police he shot them because he saw them as Christian missionaries and he wanted to "cleanse his religion and get closer to God."

"The gunman confessed to being a member of the Islamic Jihad group and said he shot the Americans because they were preaching Christianity," the official said, referring to a local group unrelated to the Palestinian movement also called Islamic Jihad.

"We feel as if we were all assassinated today, especially since Martha had close ties with everyone who frequented the hospital," said Ahmed al-Sabahi, a local Red Crescent official.

"They had a humanitarian touch with the poor."

Although one American hospital official said it may have been an isolated incident specifically related to the running of the clinic, Yemeni officials stressed Kamel's Islamist links.

Calling him an "Islamic extremist," the Interior Ministry said in a statement he belonged to the Islamic opposition party Islah.

The party said in a statement he had left to join Islamic Jihad because Islah was "too soft against the West and America."
Yemen is seen in the West as a haven for Muslim hardliners, including the al Qaeda .

SALIH CONDEMNS ATTACK & BUSH DEPLORES MURDERS

In a message to President Bush, President Ali Abdullah Saleh said: "We condemn this heinous criminal act... which will strengthen our united stand against terrorism."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president deplored the murders of the humanitarian workers: "Our intention is to bring to justice any and all people who were responsible."

ANTI-AMERICAN SENTIMENT

Anti-American sentiment has been running high in many Arab countries in recent months over Washington's support for Israel, the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan and a possible attack on Iraq.

Last month, a suspected Islamist shot dead an American missionary nurse at a clinic in Lebanon.

American diplomats declined to speculate on the motives for the attack: "We can't rule out anything but it is too early to tell," one said, adding that U.S. investigators were in Jibla.

Local security sources said Kamel was a comrade of Ali Jarallah, an Islah party member accused of shooting a prominent opposition official this week. Both were trained in Afghanistan.

In October, suspected militants attacked a French tanker off Yemen, about a year after suspected Qaeda members killed 17 U.S. sailors in an attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole.

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