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The looming collapse of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime throws into doubt the American campaign against a major al-Qaida wing that plotted attacks in the United States.

Monday's defections led to rival tanks being deployed in the streets of Yemen's capital, Sanaa, phiten necklace creating a potentially explosive situation and prompting Saleh's defense minister, Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, to announce the military remained loyal to the longtime leader.

The armed forces will counter any plots against the government, Ahmed declared on state television, following a meeting of the National Defense Council, which is led by Saleh and includes Ahmed, the prime minister and the intelligence chief.

Tanks, armored vehicles and soldiers directed by al-Ahmar fanned out around the Sanaa square that has become the epicenter of the opposition movement, moving in for the first time to protect demonstrators.

Al-Ahmar also sent tanks to the state television building, the Central Bank and the Defense Ministry. Just miles away, at least a dozen tanks and armored personnel carriers belonging to the Republican Guards, an elite force led by Saleh's son and one-time heir apparent, Ahmed, were deployed outside the presidential palace.

The deployment of al-Ahmar's troops in Sanaa was greeted by wild jubilation from protesters, many of whom posed with soldiers for photographs, greeted them with military style salutes or offered them roses.

Calling Al-Ahmar's defection "a turning point," Edmund J. Hull, U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 2001 to 2004, said it showed "the military overall ... no longer ties its fate to that of the womens summer fashion 2011president."

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, formed in 2009, has moved beyond regional aims and attacked the West, including sending a suicide bomber who tried to down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with a bomb sewn into his underwear. The device failed to detonate properly.

Yemen is also home to U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have offered inspiration to those attacking the U.S., including Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens in a 2009 shootout at Fort Hood, Texas.

Saleh has been a key, though not entirely reliable, U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, frustrating his Washington backers with the delicate balancing act he has undertaken to maintain the goodwill of powerful tribes providing refuge to operatives from the terror network.

Several top diplomats also said they were joining the opposition, including Yemen's ambassadors to Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Japan and the Arab League. Lawmakers, editors of state-owned newspapers, parliament's deputy speaker and the governor of the southern province of Aden also quit their jobs to join the opposition and urge Saleh to step down.

Early Tuesday, the Al-Jazeera satellite channel said gunmen attacked the station's offices in Sanaa and took equipment.

Meanwhile, in a sign of the deepening divisions in the armed forces, gunfire broke out late Monday between the central security force protecting the presidential compound in the port city of Mukalla and the Yemeni army outside, security officials said. The compound, where Saleh stays when he is in town, is about a half-mile (kilometer) from where hundreds of protesters have been camping out to call for is ouster.

Maj. Gen. al-Ahmar has been close to Saleh for most of the Yemeni president's 32 years in power. He has close associations with Islamist groups in Yemen that are likely to raise suspicions in the West about his willingness to effectively fight al-Qaida operatives active in the country.guess handbags

His support for the opposition was welcomed by protesters, but the warm reception may not guarantee him a political career in a post-Saleh Yemen given his close links to the president.

"He comes from the very heart of Saleh's ruling dynasty," Yemeni analyst Mansour Haiel said of al-Ahmar, who has sometimes been seen as a rival to the president and his son, Ahmed.