Gunmen kill at least 7 in old people's home in Yemen, including 4 nuns

Three gunmen attacked an old people's home in the Yemeni port of Aden on Friday, killing at least seven people, including four Christian nuns from India, local officials and residents said.

The gunmen stormed into the home with rifles and opened fire, one local official said. As well as the nuns, the dead included two Yemeni women working at the facility and a guard.

Some local sources put the death toll higher, saying that 12 elderly residents of the home had also been killed but the official could not confirm that figure.

The motive of the gunmen was not immediately known. They fled after the attack, the official said.

Yemen's embattled government is based in Aden but has struggled to impose its authority there since its forces, backed by Gulf Arab troops, expelled Iran-allied Houthi fighters who still control the country's capital, Sanaa.

Once a cosmopolitan city home to thriving Hindu and Christian communities, Aden has gone from one of the world's busiest ports as a key hub of the British empire to a largely lawless backwater.

Aden's small Christian population left long ago. Unknown assailants have previously vandalised a Christian cemetery, torched a church and last year blew up an abandoned Catholic church.