SANAA — Political factions in Yemen extended Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s presidency by one more year and approved a new federal system for the country at a national reconciliation conference that ended on Tuesday, Jan. 21, officials said.

Hadi, who became head of state in 2012 for a two-year term under a Gulf power transfer deal that saw his predecessor step down, will oversee a transition into a federal system intended to accommodate southern separatist demands for more autonomy.

The two-year interim period was due to expire in February. The president, who will also oversee the drafting of a new constitution, was further mandated to reshuffle the cabinet headed and restructure the Shura Council, the consultative upper house of parliament, to give more representation to the south and to Shi’ite Muslim rebels in the north.

President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi (4th from right) at Yemen’s national reconciliation conference.

Marring Tuesday’s talks, Ahmad Sharafeddin, a Houthi delegate at the reconciliation talks who had served as dean of the law faculty at Sanaa University, was killed when gunmen in a speeding vehicle sprayed his car with bullets in central Sanaa, officials said.

They said he died instantly and the gunmen escaped.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the assassination, but another Houthi leader, Abdulkarim al-Khiwani, accused hardline Sunni Muslim militants of carrying out the attack.

The Houthi group fought radical Sunni Salafis in northern Yemen from October until earlier this month, when a ceasefire was reached to relocate the Salafis to another city some 250 km (155 miles) away. But clashes have continued in other parts of northern Yemen with tribesmen allied to the Salafis.