Updated, 11.25

THREE SENIOR FIGURES within the military of Yemen have given their backing to the anti-government demonstrations sweeping the country, as crowds take to the streets demanding political change.

Brigadier Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar - the head of the military’s first armoured division – has pledged his support to the demonstrators, saying he would order the army to protect them in the face of a likely government clampdown.

Saying Yemen was “suffering from a comprehensive and dangerous criris”, al-Ahmar was soon backed two other army generals, Al Jazeera reports.

Al-Ahmar added that he had declared “our peaceful support of the youth revolution” on behalf of all officers and leaders of the armed forces.

As a result of the general’s defection, tanks have now been deployed across the capital of Sana’a to potential flashpoints, including the presidential palace and the ministry of defence, as a public safeguard.

The defection follows calls from within president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s own tribe to step down.

Yemen became the latest country in the Arab World to see massive public upheaval, with 52 people killed in a government crackdown on protests last week in the capital of Sana’a.

CNN reports that 17 people have been arrested for formal questioning in relation to that massacre.

The protests led Saleh to sack his cabinet yesterday, though he asked that they remain in power until successors could be appointed.

The country’s human rights minister,  had already resigned over the shootings. Yemen’s ambassadors to the United States and China have also quit over the uprisings.

Saleh has led the country for 32 years, many of which have seen the country fail to improve the economic hardship experienced by many of the country’s 24 million people – with GDP per capita less than 10 per cent of Ireland’s.

Yemen is one of the poorest states in the Middle East, having lost economic aid from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as a result of its support for Iraq during the first Gulf War.