LAHORE, Pakistan — Thousands of hard-line Islamists streamed toward Pakistan’s capital in a massive convoy of vehicles Sunday to protest the government’s decision to allow the United States and other NATO countries to resume shipping troop supplies through the country to Afghanistan.
The demonstration, which started in the eastern city of Lahore, was organized by the Difah-e-Pakistan Council — Defense of Pakistan Council — a group of politicians and religious leaders who have been the most vocal opponents of the supply line.
Pakistan closed the route in November in retaliation for American airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops. After months of negotiations, Islamabad finally agreed to reopen the route last week when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized for the deaths.
Clinton met Sunday with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on the sidelines of an Afghan aid conference in Tokyo and expressed hope that resolution of the supply line conflict would lead to better relations between the troubled allies.
One of the reasons Pakistan waited so long to resolve the conflict is that the government feared domestic backlash in a nation where anti-American sentiment is rampant despite billions of dollars in US aid during the last decade.
The protest started Sunday in the center of Lahore, where several thousand people assembled with scores of buses, cars, and motorbikes. They linked with thousands more supporters on the city’s edge and drove to Islamabad in a so-called ‘‘long march’’ against the supply line. The convoy included about 200 vehicles with some 8,000 people when it left Lahore, said police official Babar Bakht.
After completing the 185-mile journey to Islamabad, they planned to hold a demonstration outside the Parliament building Monday.
‘‘By coming out on the streets, the Pakistani nation has shown its hatred for America,’’ one of the Difah-e-Pakistan leaders, Maulana Samiul Haq, known as the father of the Taliban, said in a speech on the outskirts of Lahore.
Supporters showered Haq with rose petals as he rode through Lahore in the back of a truck with other Difah-e-Pakistan leaders, including Hafiz Saeed, founder of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group; Hamid Gul, a retired Pakistani intelligence chief with a long history of militant support; and Syed Munawar Hasan, leader of Pakistan’s most powerful Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Many demonstrators rode on the tops of buses, waving party flags and shouting slogans against the United States and NATO.
The crowd was dominated by members of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, widely thought to be a front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is blamed for the attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008 that killed more than 160 people. Jamaat-ud-Dawa is led by the group’s founder, Saeed.
The United States announced a $10 million bounty earlier this year for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Saeed, but he operates freely in the country. Pakistan says it does not have enough evidence to arrest Saeed.