World Bulletin / News Desk

Yemeni presidential guard units on Monday dispersed a rally staged by Yemeni military personnel in the northern Amran province to protest recent pay shortfalls.

Scores of army officers and soldiers demonstrated outside the residence of Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to demand overdue salaries, eyewitnesses said.

According to witnesses, presidential guard units fired into the air in an effort to disperse protesters.

Hundreds of people have been killed in weeks of clashes between Yemeni forces and Shia Houthi militants, the latter of whom captured Amran earlier this month after dealing a Yemeni army battalion deployed in the province a humiliating defeat and killing its commander.

The Shia Houthi group first appeared in 1992, taking Yemen's northern Saada province as its main base of operations.

Yemen has been dogged by turmoil since the ouster of autocratic president Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012 after 33 years in power.