AL-MUKALLA: The Iran-backed Houthi militia released Khaled Al-Ruwaishan, a former Yemeni culture minister and an outspoken writer, following a tribal mediation and public pressure, relatives and local media outlets said on Monday. The Houthis came under huge local and international pressure after heavily armed gunmen stormed the house of the former minister and snatched him along on Sunday in the capital Sana’a. Abdul Qawi Al-Ruwaishan, a friend of Al-Ruwaishan, said that dozens of Houthis had besieged the former minister’s house before smashing down the doors. Local media said that powerful tribal leaders from Khawlan, Al-Ruwaishan’s tribe, mediated his release without giving further information. Yemen observers have linked the abduction to Al-Ruwaishan’s most recent Facebook posts, in which he harshly criticized the Houthi handling of damage caused by heavy rains in areas under their control, and praising their opponents in Marib. Since taking over power in late 2014, the Houthis have abducted hundreds of their opponents including journalists, politicians and activists, and forced hundreds of others into decamping to government-controlled areas or going into exile. Abdullah Al-Mansouri, a brother of Tawfeq Al-Mansouri, one of four Yemeni journalists who were sentenced to death by a Houthi court early this month, called upon local and international rights groups to exert more pressure on Houthis until they released his brother and other detainees. “The pressure that led to the release of Al-Ruwaishan and Al-Jubaihi must be maintained on the Houthis,” Al-Mansouri told Arab News, referring to Yahya Al-Jubaihi, another Yemeni journalist who was sentenced to death by the Houthis in April 2017 and was released five months later following international uproar. In the Red Sea town of Mocha, hundreds of government officials, army officers and soldiers and social dignitaries attended the funeral of Col. Mohammed Al-Sulaihi on Sunday, a government liaison officer who was shot by a Houthi sniper in Hodeidah. Mourners carried Al-Sulaihi’s coffin, wrapped in the Yemeni flag, to his home village in Taiz for burial. Al-Sulaihi died on Friday at a local hospital in the southern port city of Aden after sustaining critical wounds from the attack last month. After mourning Al-Sulaihi’s death, Yemen’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al-Hadrami demanded UN monitors in Hodeidah move their headquarter from the Houthi controlled city to a neutral area, and to suspend their operation until the killers were brought to justice. “This is proof that the militias cannot be trusted,” Al-Hadrami said on Twitter. On the ground, fighting intensified between government forces and rebel fighters in the southern province of Dhale, where loyalists seized control of several villages, state media said on Monday.