Surviving Nun Recounts Yemen Massacre in Chilling Handwritten Note
By Dan Wooding, Founder of the ASSIST News Service
ADEN, YEMEN (ANS – March 18, 2016)
-- A lone surviving nun is telling the world her personal account of a
recent Yemen massacre she witnessed in a chilling handwritten letter.
According
to CBN News, a peaceful morning on March 4, 2016, at a Catholic nursing
home in Aden, Yemen, suddenly turned into 90 minutes of horror as men,
believed to be Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists, raided the facility with
the intent of murdering every nun and volunteer there.
According to reports, the nuns were first handcuffed and then shot at point blank range.
Sister
Sally is only eye witness to the event. She recounted her story in a
conversation with another nun, Sister Rio, who then wrote down her
account in a memorandum.
According
to India-born Sister Sally, the assailants stormed the facility on the
morning of March 4 after the nuns and volunteer aids had their usual
breakfast and prayer time.
Armed terrorists dressed in blue stormed the compound at 8:30 a.m.
“Ethiopian
men (Christian) began running to tell the sisters ISIS was there to
kill them. They were killed one by one,” Sister Sally recalled.
Another 12 others at an elderly facility were also brutally slaughtered.
CBN
News then went on to say that the terrorists proceeded to gun down
every nun and volunteer they could find until Sister Sally was the only
one left. She then tried running to warn the nearby convent before she
was forced to hide behind the door of “the refrigerator room.”
“The
[Islamic State] ISIS men were everywhere, searching for her and even
entered the refrigerator room at least three times without finding her,”
Sister Sally witnessed.
Sister Rio comments in the memorandum that Sister Sally's survival is nothing short of “miraculous.”
“The
terrorists murdered every other nun and any volunteer aids they could
find. After the rampage the Islamic extremists destroyed all religious
articles and Christian symbols at the facility,” CBN went on to say.
“The
martyred nuns were Sister Judith from Kenya, Sister Anselm from India,
and Sister Marguerite and Sister Reginette from Rwanda. They were all
associated with Members of the Missionaries of Charity, an order founded
by Mother Teresa.
“Indian priest Rev. Tom Uzhunnalil was also kidnapped by the terrorists and is yet to be found.”
The
murdered sisters had left their homes in India and Africa to serve the
poor, elderly, and disabled in the war-torn country of Yemen. They
worked together with volunteers at the convent's home care center, where
they served around sixty to eighty patients of all religions.
“They
were serving all poor people irrespective of their religion. Their duty
was to help the poor,” a representative from the Apostolic Vicariate of
Southern Arabia told the Catholic News Agency (CAN).
Sister Sally and her community are still grieving the victims' deaths but say they have “fully surrendered” to the will of God.
In
the memorandum, Sister Sally urges Christians “to pray that their blood
will be the seeds for peace in the Middle East and to stop ISIS.”
According to PressTV (http://www.presstv.ir),
no individual or group has so far claimed responsibility for the
carnage, but sources close to Yemen’s fugitive former President Abd
Rabbuh Mansur Hadi blamed it on the Islamic State [Dae’sh] (IS)
terrorists.
Yemen
has been under Saudi airstrikes on a daily basis since the regime in
Riyadh launched its military aggression against the impoverished country
in late March 2015, in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah
movement and restore power to Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.
Exploiting
the chaos in Yemen, Islamic State (Dae’sh), which is mainly operating
in Syria and Iraq, has been able to infiltrate the country.
The
Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has also taken
advantage of the volatile conditions and the breakdown of security in
Yemen since the beginning of the Saudi war to tighten its grip on parts
of southeastern Yemen.
Photo
caption: 1) The superior, Sister Sally, who hails from Kerala, India,
survived after she hid herself from the gunmen after a guard sounded a
warning cry about the attackers. 2) The bloody scene after the attack.
3) The memorandum. 4) Elderly survivors of the gruesome attack. 5) Dan
Wooding with Mother Teresa in Calcutta after his 1975 interview with
her.
About
the writer: Dan Wooding, 75, is an award-winning winning author,
broadcaster and journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary
parents, and is now living in Southern California with his wife Norma,
to whom he has been married for more than 52 years. They have two sons,
Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. Dan is
the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints
in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS), and is also the
author of some 45 books.
** You may republish this or any of our ANS stories with attribution to the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net).
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