Sana’a: An official representing Yemen’s Al Houthi rebels says an abducted presidential aide has been set free, after his seizure set in motion days of political turmoil that prompted the country’s embattled president to resign.

The official said that Ahmad Awad Bin Mubarak has been released and handed over to local tribes in the southern province of Shabwa.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

The rebels control the capital Sana’a. They abducted Mubarak to protest President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s decision to proceed with a draft constitution that would divide Yemen into six federal states — something Al Houthis strongly oppose.

Meanwhile. a Yemeni rights group said on Tuesday a sixth grade pupil aged about 12 was killed in a US drone strike east of the capital Sana’a, an assertion that could raise fresh concern over Washington’s campaign against suspected militants.

The group said Mohammad Saleh Qayed Taeiman was one of three people reported killed in Monday’s drone strike. It said his father and older brother were killed in a 2011 drone strike, and a third brother was wounded in another drone attack.

Yemeni officials said on Monday that three men believed to be Al Qaida militants were killed in a car travelling in the Hareeb region of Marib province, the first drone strike since Hadi and his government quit last Thursday.

Yemen is the main stronghold of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the Islamist militant group’s most active wings. The group recently claimed responsibility for the attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The United States acknowledges using drones to combat AQAP in Yemen but does not comment publicly on attacks.

A tribal leader said that Taeiman was an AQAP militant. Another tribal leader said he was about 15 years old.

But the Yemeni National Organisation for Drone Victims (NODV) described him as “a normal kid”.

“He was in sixth grade, so his age was between about 11-13 years old,” NODV head Mohammad Al Qawli said, adding that Taeiman was recently treated at a Yemeni government military hospital in Sana’a after he was kicked by a camel.

NODV said that Taeiman’s 65-year-old father, Saleh Qayed Taeiman, died along with one of his sons called Jalal, 16, in the 2011 drone strike. A third brother, 17-year-old Ezz Al Deen, survived another drone strike, but still has shrapnel in his body, NODV said.

NODV said that one of the other victims in Monday’s strike was identified as Abdullah Khalid Aziz Al Zindani, a farm worker married to a woman from the Taeiman clan, which was due to meet with other tribes in the area to discuss their response.

AQAP claimed responsibility for the deadly Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris on January 7 and American officials fear Al Qaida will gain strength in Yemen’s current power vacuum.

Two US security officials had said on Friday the collapse of Hadi’s US-backed government left America’s counter-terrorism campaign “paralysed”, but Monday’s strike suggests the CIA-run drone campaign has not been dismantled.