The Protest were done by two groups simultaneously at he University Campus , while The larger of the two groups called for the end of Saleh’s 32-year rule.

“Get out get out, Ali. Join your friend Ben Ali,” the crowds chanted, comparing Saleh to Tunisia’s ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Another smaller group however wanted him to stay in office.

The protest turned violent after police fired tear gas at the students. According to security officials some 30 protesters were also detained during the turmoil.

Saturday’s demonstration, which was confined to the grounds of the University of Sanaa, is considered as the first major public challenge to the Yemeni president.

Protests have been witnessed in major Yemeni cities since the Tunisians overthrew their president earlier this month.

However, calling for President Saleh’s ouster had been a red line that few protesters dared to test.

One of the rally organizers, lawmaker Fouad Dahaba, said the demonstration was only a beginning and they will not stop until their demands are met.

“We will march the streets of Sanaa, to the heart of Sanaa and to the presidential palace. The coming days will witness an escalation,” the Associated Press quoted Dahaba as saying.

People in Yemen are angry about increasing commodity and fuel prices.

They are also enraged at a controversial constitutional amendment, approved by Yemen’s parliament on January 1, which could see President Saleh rule for life.

In an attempt to cool public outrage, last week, Saleh suspended the country’s oil minister and slashed state workers’ income tax rates by up to fifty percent.

However tensions seem to persist in the impoverished conflict-riddled country.

Activists say the revolution in Tunisia is an epoch-making change which threatens the existence of dictatorial regimes in the Arab world.

Yemen Government has arrested a woman activist Tawakul Karman who led student rallies against the government in the capital last week, sparking a new wave of protests on Sunday.

Inspired by the ousting of Tunisia’s president a week ago, Tawakul Karman led two protests at Sanaa University, criticising autocratic Arab leaders and calling on Yemenis to topple President Ali Abdullah Saleh by using text messages and emails

A security source said Karman, a member of the Islamist party Islah, was arrested by order of the General Prosecution Office.

Police stopped Karman on her way home early on Sunday and charged her with organising unlicensed demonstrations without permission, said her husband Mohamed Ismail al-Nehmi, who was with her.

“I have no accurate information about her whereabouts,” Nehmi told Reuters by phone. “Maybe at the central prison, maybe somewhere else, I don’t know.”

After Karman’s arrest, several hundred students gathered outside Sanaa University, demanding her release.

Riot police beat up two TV cameramen filming the protests and confiscated their cameras, a Reuters eyewitness said. One was briefly arrested.

Some 50-60 policemen armed with shields and batons stopped the crowd, chanting “release the prisoners”, from marching towards the general prosecutors’ office, the witness said.

Karman, who heads the Yemeni activist group Women Journalists Without Chains, had also called on Yemenis to support the Tunisian people.

The overthrow of the Tunisian president was a political earthquake that has shattered the image of oppressive, military-backed Arab rulers as immune to popular discontent.

Saleh has ruled Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, for over three decades.

More than 40 percent of the 23 million people live on under $2 a day and almost a third suffer from chronic hunger.

Hundreds of protesters in Sanaa last week held signs reading: “Leave before you are forced to leave.”

Thousands demonstrated in the south on Thursday to show their rejection of political reforms proposed by the government, including a limit on presidential terms, which they said did not go far enough.

Tunisia is grappling with the fallout from the overthrow of long-time President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia after weeks of violent unrest driven by social grievances.