“We will defend ourselves with all our forces and by all means,” he told a large crowd of loyalists in the capital where tens of thousands of opposition activists also rallied to demand his immediate ouster.

“Stop playing with fire, Joint Meeting Parties, you saboteurs,” said Saleh in reference to the country’s main opposition. Meanwhile, Yemen’s official news agency SABA said Friday that Saleh’s party accused Qatar of siding with the protesters and welcomed its withdrawal from the talks.

“Yemen is ready to deal with the Gulf initiative without the participation of the (Great) state of Qatar, which is involved in the conspiracy and events taking place not only in Yemen, but in the Arab region in general,” said a statement from the ruling National Congress Party. Without elaborating, the statement said, “the state of Qatar has its own agenda and the party which stands behind it is known.”

The statement was in response to Qatar’s decision to pull out from mediation to end Yemen’s political crisis. Qatar blamed the country’s embattled president for the impasse.

Qatar was among six Gulf nations pushing a deal for President Saleh to step down after 32 years in power in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Three months of massive street protests have demanded the autocratic ruler’s immediate departure, and a government crackdown has killed about 150 people, according to the Associated Press.

Qatar’s official news agency said that the GCC secretary-general, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, was informed of the withdrawal decision on Thursday.

“The government was obliged to take the decision because of the stalling and delays in the signing of the agreement, the escalation of the events, the severe confrontations and the lack of wisdom which contradict the spirit of the initiative,” QNA said.

Yemen’s parliamentary opposition on Friday declared a Gulf-led transition plan “dead” and vowed to step up a campaign for the immediate ouster of President Saleh.

“The initiative of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is dead,” Yemen’s parliamentary opposition spokesman Mohammed Qahtan told AFP. He said Qatar’s pullout from the initiative on Thursday signaled its collapse.

Qahtan said the opposition would “intensify the peaceful revolt in coming days and turn it into a civil disobedience movement that will lead to the downfall of the president and bring him and his henchmen to justice.”

Elsewhere in the troubled country, three protesters were shot dead and more than ten injured on Friday when Republican Guards and pro-government loyalists in plainclothes fired bullets on peaceful protesters, an eyewitness told Arab News.

Faisal Al-Humaidi, a local human right activist, said that the demonstrators were mourning a protester’s killing in Sanaa when the soldiers started firing at them from the rooftops of the neighboring buildings.

"The protesters reacted by throwing shoes at them which galvanized the soldiers into firing more extensively. The protesters besieged the snipers and handed them to the military police.”

However, the state-run websites said on Friday that opposition gunmen in the city opened fire on people injuring 12 and sabotaging a police car.

In the city of Taiz, three demonstrators were reportedly injured on Friday.