Ultra-loyalist elite Republican Guards lose their loyalist feelings to the president's son, their leader, and flood the anti-government protest camp in the capital Sanaa to join the Yemen Free Army. Defections like this are regular and comprise not only of Republican Guards but also Central Security headed by the president's nephew, and many other police and army sectors are defecting. The free army is mostly comprised of the 1st Armoured Division which pledged in March 2011 that it answers to the people and not the president and will protect the people if the president wants to kill them.

They announce that they are not the army of a governing family but the army of the people. They chant with arms raised, "the army wants the prosecution of the killer" meaning the president.


Most of the atrocities and bombing in Yemen's civil war is being perpetrated by loyalist Republican Guards shelling civilians and protesters.