Protesters rallied in Taiz and the capital Sanaa on Saturday after Houthi's announced the formation of a "security commission", including former ministers, a day after its takeover of parliament as part of a coup.
There were demonstrations in Hudaida, Taiz, Dhamer, Ibb and Aden as well as Sanaa.
The Houthi declaration was followed by an explosion outside the Houthi-controlled presidential palace in Sanaa that wounded a policeman and a civilian, witnesses said.
There were also reports that Houthis fired into the air to disperse protesters at a Sanaa university who had come out to demonstrate. Six people were arrested, witnesses said.
Who are the Houthis?
On Friday, the Houthis' takeover of power drew a rebuke from Washington, the United Nations and neighbouring Gulf states.
The Shia group, which has controlled Sanaa since September last year, said it would set up a 551-member national council to replace parliament in the violence-wracked country, a key US ally in the fight against al-Qaeda.
The Houthis said the defence and interior ministers in the government of outgoing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi were among the 18 members of the security commission.
A five-member presidential council will form a transitional government for two years, the Houthis announced in a "constitutional declaration" which also mentioned a "revolutionary council to defend the nation".
Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from Aden, said the announcement would have ramifications throughout the region.
"There are huge regional implications," he said.
"The Houthis have very good ties with Iran and have allegedly been receiving both material and political backing from Iran."
The move threatens to further split an already divided Yemen, Elshayyal said.
"Popularly speaking the Houthis are a Shia minority, and there is a lot of opposition to them from the Sunni majority," he said.
"Politically speaking you have regions like Aden that have said they reject the Houthi takeover and will not accept orders from Sanaa. Some have called for like-minded governorates to come together and discuss the situation.
"This is an opportunity for them to advance their cause and increase calls for separation."
Aden, Shabwa, Hadramount and Maarib are all opposed to the Houthi's control of Sanaa.
Yemen's south accounts for 70 percent of the country's production and southern regions have been safeguarding against a Houthi advance into the area, our correspondent added.
Regions such as Bab, Taiz, Maarib and Almandab could all be impacted by the advancement of the Houthi group.
Sunni tribes in the eastern, oil-rich province of Maarib cried foul after parliament was dissolved and people took to the streets of Sanaa in protest on Friday.
"We reject the authors of this coup in Sanaa," a spokesman for the influential Maarib tribes, Sheikh Saleh al-Anjaf, told AFP news agency.
Youth activists, who played a key role in the 2011 uprising that forced out veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh, released a statement saying they "reject the hegemony of the Houthi militia".
In Taez, Yemen's third-largest city, protest tents were pitched outside the local government building against what anti-Houthi demonstrators called "the coup d'etat", residents said.
Protests also erupted in the western city of Hudeida and in Aden, Yemen's second city in the south where the governor, Abdel Aziz bin Habtur, called the Houthi declaration "a plot against the constitution".
Yemeni female Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman said the declaration was "null and void" and expected the people to rise against the Houthi "coup", and "liberate" the capital.
A senior American official, speaking in Munich after Secretary of State John Kerry met leaders of Yemen's Gulf neighbours, said the US and the Gulf Cooperation Council "don't agree" with the Houthi "presidential council", while the UN Security Council raised the prospect of possible sanctions.
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