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BANNU, Pakistan, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Thousands of tribesmen staged a noisy protest in northwestern Pakistan in support of Islamic guerrillas on Thursday after troops began blowing up homes of villagers accused of harbouring al Qaeda militants.

Troops destroyed five houses and detained at least four tribesmen in the village of Jani Kheil on Wednesday and Thursday after they refused to hand over six al Qaeda suspects thought to be hiding there, local government officials said.

Protesters marched through the streets of the nearby town of Bannu and called on the government of President Pervez Musharraf to halt the raids, which involved units from among 1,800 paramilitary soldiers deployed around the village since Monday.

The protesters burned effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush and Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror.

"Mujahideen (holy warriors) are our guests and if any action is taken against them then we will launch a jihad (holy war)," Maulvi Naseebullah, local leader of the fundamentalist Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam party told the rally.

"Musharraf should resign forthwith for the sake of Islam and Pakistan."

As the demonstration was going on troops demolished three homes in Jani Kheil, which is about 255 km (160 miles) southwest of Islamabad, in an effort to force tribesmen to hand over suspects they were accused of sheltering.

Two houses were blown up on Wednesday and officials said the operation would continue until the tribesmen surrendered the wanted men.

People living nearby said five of the men being sought were thought to be Saudi Arabian or Indonesian. Villagers insisted they were locals and none was an al Qaeda member.

HEAVILY ARMED

A government official said the suspected militants had been in custody but were snatched by heavily armed tribesmen from a military post near Jani Kheil on Monday.

The protest in Bannu was called by Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of six hardline Islamic groups opposing Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led war on terror that led to the overthrow of the radical Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's armed forces have been hunting large numbers of al Qaeda members and their Taliban allies who are thought to have crossed into Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal region after U.S. forces began pursuing them in Afghanistan last year.

The United States blames al Qaeda and its leader, Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington and has vowed to hunt them down.

The Wednesday edition of Britain's Guardian newspaper, meanwhile, reported that Pakistani intelligence had secretly arrested the leader of an al Qaeda cell suspected of training a local sectarian group to attack Western targets in Pakistan.

A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official denied the report of the July arrest of Kenyan born Sheikh Ahmed Salim, listed by Washington as one its 20 most wanted terrorists.

"There was no such arrest," said Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, head of the ministry's Crisis Management Cell.

Pakistan says hundreds of militants have been caught in the tribal areas and others in the cities of Faisalabad and Lahore.

But many fugitives are thought to have melted into the local population. The whereabouts of bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are unknown.

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