As prayers concluded on Islam's holy day, anti-war protestors gathered in the public gardens of Multan, an ancient Punjabi city famed for its shrines of Muslim saints.

A group protestors hurled stones and shoes at an effigy of US President George W. Bush, emblazoned with the words "The Great Satan," and chanted 'Allah-o Akbar' (God is great) and 'jihad' (holy war), witnesses said.

Earlier prayer leaders delivered fiery sermons lambasting the "naked aggression" of US-led forces against the oil-rich Muslim country.

"We pray to Allah to destroy the aggressors and bestow victory on Iraqi Muslims," said Maulana Fazlur Rehman of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, the alliance of fundamentalist anti-US parties which led the Multan rally.

The MMA led the biggest anti-war rallies ever witnessed in Pakistan in recent weeks, drawing crowds as large as 250,000 as part of a "million man march" series of protests.

In Lahore, 300 kilometers (186 miles) north-east of Multan, a rally by 200 lawyers accused Pakistan's senate of treading too softly in a resolution, passed Wednesday, criticising the war.

The unanimous resolution "strongly deploring" the war should have used the word "condemn," the lawyers said.

A ten-vehicle convoy of Islamic protestors, led by the hardline Jamaat Ahle Sunnat party, arrived in Lahore on the second day of a 1,000 kilometermile) protest journey from the northern city of Rawalpindi to Karachi on the south coast.

Pakistan's government, a key ally of the United States in its 18-month war on terrorism, has "deplored" the war, but also stopped short of condemning it.

Public opinion is strongly against the war in this Islamic republic of 145 million people, many of whom perceive it as an attack on the Muslim world.

In Islamabad, the capital, local MMA leaders called for jihad during a protest by some 150 people.

Around 300 people marched through the bazaars of the north-west city Peshawar, chanting anti-US and pro-Iraq slogans.

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