Houthi spokesperson in Al-Doha-brokered peace deal and field leader, Sheikh Saleh Habra and a number of his followers were allegedly killed while they were sitting at a gasoline station in Al-Anad, Sa’ada.

An army spokesman who spoke in anonymity as he was not authorized to talk in the incident told media outlets that it had yet to identify Habra’s body while Houthi rebel’s spokesman denied Habra’s death.

Houthi’s spokesman, Mohamed Abdul Salam, denied Habra’s death, and said he had not been directly involved in the fighting over the past two weeks.

He is “alive and well”, local sources quoted Abdul Salam, as saying.

Local sources from Sa’ada governorate revealed that Habra’s withdrawal of making press statements could refer to his death.

The five-year-old rebellion in Sa’ada, which borders mainly Sunni Saudi Arabia, pits Shiite Muslims against Yemen’s Sunni-led government.

Expert in the Yemeni affairs said that the Sa’ada fighting, “right next door to the world’s biggest oil producer,” compounds the region’s security threat and underscores Yemen’s weaknesses.

The impoverished Arabian Peninsula country is already battling a separate uprising to the south, and a resurgent Al-Qaida, while the government has little authority outside the major cities and has tried repeatedly to suppress the Sa’ada rebels, with little success.

The government launched a major offensive to crush the rebels. Sources close to the government say its army has made comprehensive progress against the rebels in the past week. However, communications with the unstable governorate have been detached for over a week making it difficult to get independent news.