Hundreds of Yemenis protested outside the presidential residence in Sanaa Saturday over what they say is the authorities' inaction over a Shiite rebel advance on the capital.

The demonstrators, some from Amran province north of the city where Huthi rebels, also known as Ansarullah, are clashing with the army, chanted "Stop the Huthi advance!"

Yemeni President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has removed heavy artillery from hills surrounding Sanaa over fears his predecessor, to whom some elements remain loyal, is plotting a coup, an official said Monday.

The move comes with the presidential guard, backed by armored vehicles, surrounding a mosque controlled by ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh in the capital since late Saturday, an AFP correspondent reported.

Fresh clashes broke out Sunday between Yemeni government forces and Shiite Huthi rebels, tribal sources said, ending an 11-day truce reached with mediation backed by United Nations envoy Jamal Benomar.

The renewed fighting in the northern province of Amran had shut off the road linking it to the capital, the sources said.

Yemen's military and al-Qaida suspects who fled an army offensive in the south clashed in a district near the capital Sunday, killing six troops and three jihadists, security and tribal sources said.

And two overnight drone strikes targeted al-Qaida suspects in Wasl, a village in Arhab, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Sanaa, tribal sources in the area said.

Three "terrorists" were killed Sunday in clashes at a checkpoint near Yemen's presidential palace, two days after a suspected al-Qaida attack on the same post killed five guards, the interior ministry said.

A civilian was also killed in the gunfight which erupted at dawn after gunmen attacked the presidential guard checkpoint near Misbahi roundabout, around 500 meters (yards) from the palace, a statement said.

A German diplomat was wounded in the Yemeni capital on Monday as he evaded an attempt by gunmen to kidnap him, a security official said.

The German foreign ministry confirmed that an embassy vehicle came under fire, adding that all passengers were "safe."

Yemeni troops freed an Italian U.N. staffer and his driver on Tuesday just hours after their abduction from a diplomatic district of Sanaa, the interior ministry said.

The kidnappers were stopped at a checkpoint on the outskirts and the hostages were freed, a ministry official told Agence France Presse.

Yemeni security forces were on Friday hunting down 29 inmates, including 19 suspected al-Qaida members, who broke out of jail in a deadly assault in the capital.

The official Saba news agency cited an interior ministry statement as saying 29 people convicted "of various terrorist and criminal charges" escaped when a blast breached the facility's outer wall on Thursday.

Gunmen have abducted a British teacher in Sanaa, in the second kidnapping this month of a British expat in violence-hit Yemen, a security official said Thursday.

The unidentified gunmen captured the teacher on Wednesday evening as he returned from work, the official said. A Western diplomat confirmed the kidnapping.

Gunmen raked a military bus with gunfire in Yemen's capital Sanaa moments before it was hit by a bomb, leaving two soldiers dead and 12 wounded, witnesses and an official said.

The attack is the latest in a series of bombs and shootings targeting military personnel in Yemen, which is struggling to achieve a political transition that aims to turn the republic into a federation.