Sana'a: US journalist Luke Somers was killed during a rescue operation in Shabwa in southern Yemen on Saturday, a senior official in the president's office told Reuters.
He said the government initially believed Somers had been freed but later learnt he had died.
Yemen's Defence Ministry said earlier on Saturday that an American hostage had been freed in an operation that killed 10 militants.
Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 as he left a supermarket in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, said Fakhri Al Arashi, chief editor of the National Yemen, where Somers worked as a copy editor and a freelance photographer during the 2011 uprising in Yemen.
Somers, who was born in Britain, earned a bachelor's degree in creative writing while attending Beloit College in Wisconsin from 2004 through 2007.
"He really wanted to understand the world," said Shawn Gillen, an English professor and chairman of Beloit College's journalism program who had Gillen as a student.
Fuad Al Kadas, who called Somers one of his best friends, said Somers spent time in Egypt before finding work in Yemen. Somers started teaching English at a Yemen school but quickly established himself as a one of the few foreign photographers in the country, he said.
"He is a great man with a kind heart who really loves the Yemeni people and the country," Al Kadas wrote in an email from Yemen. He said he last saw Somers the day before he was kidnapped.
"He was so dedicated in trying to help change Yemen's future, to do good things for the people that he didn't leave the country his entire time here," Al Kadas wrote.
