World Bulletin / News Desk

One of Yemen's top journalists and activists close to the country's dominant Houthi militia, Abdul Kareem al-Khaiwani, has been killed, the group's official television channel al-Maseerah said.

Mr. Khaiwani was a longtime supporter of the Houthi rebel movement, which seized the capital last year, setting off one of the worst political crises in Yemen recent history.

For years, Mr. Khaiwani wrote about the Houthi rebellion against the central government, drawing the ire of officials in Sana. More recently, he acted as a spokesman for the group and served on a senior leadership committee, representing the Houthis’ most liberal wing.

In a statement after the shooting, Amnesty International said that, “given the history of intimidation and harassment Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani faced for his outspoken journalism and peaceful activism, his despicable killing today smacks of a politically motivated assassination.”

In a report in the New York times, it was reported that the death of Mr. Khaiwani added to the growing list of leftist and liberal activists who have been killed across the Arab world, from Tunis to Damascus, over the last four years — women and men silenced by a violent regional order increasingly dominated by militia fighters, Islamist extremists and vindictive state security forces.

Mr. Khaiwani was one of the few journalists in Yemen to shine a light on the government’s brutal war against the Houthis in northern Saada Province, publishing accounts and photographs on his website in defiance of official attempts to hide the fighting from public view.