Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi on Monday named former oil minister Khaled Mahfoud Bahah as new prime minister, the official Saba news agency reported, in a move aiming to end a prolonged crisis gripping the country.

"Bahah is agreed upon as new prime minister by all presidential advisors in a meeting presided by President Hadi on Monday," Saba reported. "The move of appointing Bahah is welcomed by all political parties with hopes to get the country out of prolonged political crisis."

The Shiite Houthi group welcomed Hadi's appointment of Khaled Bahah.

"We officially welcome President Hadi's appointment of Khaled Bahah as new prime minister and we call on Hadi to issue a presidential decree on his appointment as soon as possible," Ali al-Emad, the Houthi spokesman and member of the group's political bureau, told Xinhua by phone.

Bahah is the second premier named by Hadi in a week after the Shiite Houthi group rejected Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, director of the presidential office, as prime minister, further deepening a political crisis after the Houthis overran the capital Sanaa in late September.

In a presidential decree issued on Oct. 7, Hadi named Mubarak as new prime minister. Mubarak, who was named in a presidential decree as prime minister on Oct. 7, resigned two days later as the Houthi group vowed to organize mass protests to force his ouster.

The Houthi group accused of "foreign interference" in Mubarak's nomination and then withdrew its representative from the presidential advisory body.

Bahah, born in 1965 in Yemen's southeastern province of Hadramout, served as oil minister from March to June in 2014. He was replaced due to protests triggered by shortage of fuel and electricity, and later named as envoy to the United Nations.

On Sept. 21, the government and Shiite Houthi group signed a cease-fire deal in Sanaa, both agreeing to stop fighting in the capital, nominate a prime minister within a week and form a technocrat government within a month.

However, the Houthi group refused to hand over towns and cities seized in previous weeks and has taken over almost all state institutions in Sanaa since then.

The deal empowers the Houthi rebels as it allows the group to play an important role in forming a cabinet and determining the future control of the army.

The peace agreement put an end to deadly clashes between the rebels and the army supported by Sunni militia, which left about 400 people killed, including about 50 civilians.