American lives in Pakistan will be in danger if the United States attacks Iraq, an Islamic leader has warned at a rally in the Pakistani city of Islamabad.
"If the US attacks Iraq there will be open war here," Mr Maulana Samiul Haq, a leader of the Islamic party alliance, told hundreds of protestors outside Islamabad's Red Mosque. "No American will be safe here," he said.
The rally was one of many anti-US protests that saw hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis take to the streets today.
Mr Haq said Muslims would be obliged to wage jihad, or holy war, if Iraq comes under attack. "We will not show any weakness. Jihad is an obligation in Islam. We will continue to support jihad and jihadi organisations," he said.
The US consulate in Karachi and an Islamabad church frequented by US diplomatic families were targeted in 2002 by Islamic militants angered by the US-led campaign in Afghanistan. Anti-US feeling in the Islamic republic of 145 million people has widened in recent months.
The arrests of several doctors by US agents hunting al-Qaeda suspects, the US bombing of an empty religious school on the Afghan border, and the subjecting of US-based Pakistanis to extra scrutiny has fuelled this resentment.
Pakistan's moderate government - a key US ally in its war on terrorism - opposes unilateral action against Iraq but has said it would support any decision by the United Nations Security Council.
AFP