The shooting death of a 20-year-old student at Yemen’s Sana’a University has sparked massive protests against the militarization of the campus.

Saleh al Houti, 20, was shot by a soldier acting as a guard at the university gate on Tuesday as he drove onto campus. As word of the shooting spread, student protesters swarmed around the car of a university official, pelting it with shoes and bottles and breaking its windows. Armed kinsmen of the victim blocked all entry and exit from the university until Yemen’s minister of higher education arrived on campus making personal assurances that the shooter had been arrested.

Thousands of students marched on the Yemeni parliament the following day, demanding an end to armed guards on campus grounds.

Ridhwan Masood, the head of the university’s student union, said that students would “continue to organise protests inside the university campus and in front of the cabinet and parliament, using all legal means to kick out these soldiers and intelligence agents who repress our activities and abuse us out of the university … The government should stop militarising the university life. This is an academic institution and not a security compound.”