Dubai (AFP)
Nabil al-Quaety, a Yemeni videographer collaborating with AFP, was killed on Tuesday by armed men outside his home in Aden, in southern Yemen, a poor country in the war-ravaged Arabian peninsula.
"Unidentified gunmen" shot Nabil al-Quaety, who was in his car, shortly after leaving his home, local security source in Aden told AFP, adding that the "attackers" were "managed to escape".
The 34-year-old videographer, who also worked with regional media, has been collaborating with AFP since 2015, when a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia engaged in Yemen alongside government forces against the Houthi rebels .
Yemeni Deputy Minister of Information Najib Ghallab condemned the murder of Nabil al-Quaety, saying that the "assassination" constituted "an attack on the press in Yemen", and reflected "the failures and errors of all parties to the conflict ".
"It seems that his important activity as a journalist in recent times has angered certain extremist movements," he added in a statement to AFP.
The minister demanded a "transparent" investigation, and called on the government like the Southern Separatist Movement (STC), which recently took control of Aden, to cooperate.
"We are shocked by the senseless murder of a brave journalist who did his job despite threats and intimidation," said AFP news director Phil Chetwynd.
"Through his work with AFP for the past five years, Nabil has helped show the world the horror of the conflict in Yemen."
"Everyone's thoughts at AFP today go to his wife and children," he added.
Father of three, Nabil al-Quaety, whose wife is pregnant, escaped death in early 2019 after a Houthi rebel drone attack on Al-Anad airbase in southern Lahj province ).
In 2016, his coverage of the Battle of Aden, a city in the south that became temporary capital after the Houthis' capture of Sanaa, earned him the rank of finalist of the Rory Peck Prize for independent journalists.
"What do we know about Yemen? We know there is a terrible, tragic war, but we don't see it. There must be very few places where it is so difficult to enter and enter. "get out of the images," noted the jury.
More than two years ago, in April 2018, another journalist collaborating with AFP, the Yemeni photographer and videographer Abdullah Al-Qadry, was killed during a bombardment in the center of the country, where he was in mission for a local television channel.
In Yemen, "attacks, kidnappings and threats are the daily lot of journalists (...) when they are not victims of the clashes they cover", according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which ranks the country 167th (out of 180) in terms of press freedom.
The war in Yemen has left tens of thousands of people dead, most of them civilians.
© 2020 AFP