DUBAI: The Yemeni government has called for an investigation after a journalist was shot dead in the southern city of Aden.
Nabil Hasan Al-Quaety, a 34-year-old Yemeni videographer and photographer, who contributed to the international news agency AFP, as well as well as other major news organizations in the region, was shot while in his car by unknown assailants shortly after leaving his home on Tuesday.
“Targeting journalist Nabil Al-Quaety in an organized and planned assassination is an attack on the press in Yemen, and it reflects the failures and mistakes of all the warring parties,” Najib Ghallab, undersecretary at Yemen’s information ministry, told AFP.
“We condemn this crime against Quaety, whose work was to cover events and facts in pictures. It seems that his work has caused outrage among some extremist parties.”
Ghallab called for “a clear and transparent” investigation into the killing, and for the internationally recognized government and the southern separatists - who control Aden - to collaborate in the probe.
Quaety was married with three children and a fourth on the way.
Quaety was a finalist in Britain’s 2016 Rory Peck Award for his work covering Yemen’s long conflict with an entry the judges described as “rare and outstanding.”
AFP’s Global News Director Phil Chetwynd said the news network was “shocked by the senseless killing of a courageous journalist doing his job despite threats and intimidation.”
“Through his work with AFP over the past five years, Nabil had helped to show a global audience the full horror of the conflict in Yemen. The quality of his work had been widely recognized,” he said.
