SANAA: Yemenis in the capital Sanaa and the central city of Taiz held the largest protests yet against a takeover by the Houthi militia Wednesday after the U.S., Britain and France shut their embassies over security fears.

Hundreds massed in the capital against the Houthi fighters, who manned checkpoints and guarded government buildings they control. The militants, bedecked in tribal robes and automatic rifles, shot in the air and thrust daggers at the crowds opposing their rule.

Tens of thousands of people also carried banners and chanted anti-Houthi slogans in Taiz, which the militants have not taken.

The Iranian-backed Houthi movement has called its seizure of power a revolution and says it wants to rid the country of corruption and economic peril – though Yemen’s Gulf Arab neighbors say it is a coup.

Yemen had long been at the forefront of the U.S.-led war against Al-Qaeda, but the long-standing alliance between Washington and Sanaa appears to have ended for now.

The U.S. ambassador and diplomatic staff left the embassy Wednesday, local workers said, a day after Washington announced it was closing the mission. Embassy workers had already destroyed weapons, computers and documents, they added.

“Recent unilateral actions disrupted the political transition process in Yemen, creating the risk that renewed violence would threaten Yemenis and the diplomatic community in Sanaa,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said.

France and Britain announced the closure of their embassies Wednesday, and German Embassy employees said the mission was getting rid of sensitive documents and would close soon.

The Houthis, who overran Sanaa in September and formally took power last week, are stridently anti-American, and chant “death to America” at rallies.

Abdel-Malik al-Ijri, a member of the Houthi movement’s political bureau, said on Facebook the decision to close the embassies was “not justified at all and comes in the context of pressure on our people.”

“Governments of brotherly and friendly countries in the near future will realize that it is in their interest to deal with the will of our people with due respect,” Ijri wrote.He also dismissed a report from U.S. Embassy workers that the militants had seized more than 20 of their vehicles, saying they had been taken by airport authorities.

Houthi forces advanced far into the south Tuesday night, according to local officials, continuing their expansion of recent months which is raising fears of an all-out civil war.

Leaders and Sunni tribesmen in the southern and eastern regions, which the group has so far not seized, are arming themselves against their push and are in some cases making common cause with Yemeni Al-Qaeda militants.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the global militant group’s most powerful arms, has repeatedly bombed and attacked Houthi targets.

Other tribes from Yemen’s formerly independent south, which has clamored for secession for almost a decade, vowed to repel any Houthi attack.

The Houthi forces are bolstered by army units widely believed to maintain loyalty to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, although he denies any link.