Sana’a: A prominent veteran Yemeni journalist loyal to Al Houthis was assassinated on Wednesday in the Yemeni capital in the latest drive-by shooting targeting figures who back the rebels who are in control of the capital.

Pro-Al Houthi official media said that unidentified men on motorbike opened fire on Abdul Kareem Al Khiwani who died instantly.

Mohammad Al Bukhiti, a spokesperson for the rebels, accused the rival Islah party of allegedly collaborating with Al Qaida to kill their supporters. “Those members of Islah who work with Al Qaida are responsible for the killing Al Khiwani,” he said on the rebel-funded Al Masira TV.

The award-winning journalist had recently appeared strongly defending the rebels after their seizure of power in September.

Al Khiwani is the fourth Al Houthi activist and journalist who were killed since the prominence of the rebels in the political landscape since early 2013.

In November, Mohammad Abdul Malek Al Mutawakel, the secretary-general of the Union of Popular Forces party, was gunned down by armed men on a motorcycle in a street in central Sana’a. Also in the capital, Ahmad Sharaf Al Deen, the rebels’ representative in the country’s transitional talks, was shot dead early last year,

Al Khiwani has long been known as a strong critic of the regime of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and revealed many corruption cases when he was the editor of Al Shura weekly newspaper in 2004.

In the same year, the first bloody confrontation between Saleh’s forces and the budding Al Houthi movement sparked in the mountains of the northern province of Sa’ada. Al Khiwani strongly opposed the war through his writings and managed to publish reports that documented human right violations by Saleh’s regime during the war.

Saleh responded by throwing him in prison and torturing him, according to some human right organisations. Al Khiwani was released a year later following a big international and national campaign by right organisations. Al Khiwani moved into challenging what he described as Saleh’s attempts to groom his son for power.

In 2008, the journalist was sentenced to six years in prison for his “pro-Al Houthi” stories. Honouring him for his courageous writings, Al Khiwani was given Amnesty International’s “Journalists at Risk” award in 2008.

Separately, sporadic clashes erupted on Wednesday in the port city of Aden between Special Security Forces (SSF) and pro-Yemen president popular committees. Tension between the SSF and President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi intensified when the chief security of SSF refused to step down. Local sources in Aden said the soldiers and the armed men exchanged fire when the soldiers arrested a member of the committees in a government office in the city.

Gulf News