Assailants on a motorbike on Wednesday shot dead one of Yemen's top journalists, Abdul Kareem al-Khaiwani, who is also an activist close to the country's dominant Houthi group, police sources said.
The group's television channel al-Maseerah said al-Khaiwani, who had served as a delegate for the group in a national dialogue conference on Yemen's future, was "martyred in a criminal assassination" near his house in the centre of the capital Sanaa.
Khaiwani's editorials were once the scourge of Yemen's veteran autocrat, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and he accused the ruler of 33 years of styling his son to succeed him.
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Growing closer to the Houthi movement when Arab Spring protests ousted Saleh in 2012, Khaiwani was among several delegates who represented the group at the talks, convened to map out reforms to be incorporated into a new draft constitution before the Houthis captured Sanaa in September.