QUETTA, Pakistan -- Thousands of people gathered in southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday for the funeral of a Pakistani executed in the United States for killing two CIA employees, and hailed Mir Amil Kansi as an Islamic hero.

The country's new National Assembly, meeting for the first time this week after three years of military rule, also interrupted its proceedings on Tuesday to offer a brief prayer for Kansi.

Kansi, 38, was executed by lethal injection last week in a case that sparked protests in Pakistan and fears of retaliation against U.S. interests.

An Islamist political leader led the prayer in Parliament in the capital Islamabad condemning those who helped in the arrest of Kansi in Pakistan in 1997 and allowed him to be taken back to the United States for trial.

"God, destroy those who handed him over to America," said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a religious party leader from Kansi's native city of Quetta, which borders Afghanistan. "God, his murderers whether in America or in Pakistan, may they meet their fate soon."

In the southwestern city of Quetta, thousands of people gathered at a stadium to mourn Kansi. "Kansi is a soldier of Islam," an Islamic cleric told the crowd. "He did not bow his head in front of America, he gave his life."

Kansi is to be buried later in the day in his ancestral graveyard in Quetta.

He was convicted in the United States for killing two CIA employees outside the organization's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in 1993 in anger over U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Witnesses said it was the largest funeral prayer in Quetta in living memory but seemed to be taking place peacefully. The city was in mourning with shops closed, streets deserted and black flags hoisted on roof tops.

The arrival of Kansi's body on Monday was greeted by a crowd of several thousand people chanting anti-U.S. slogans, including "Crush the United States".

Kansi's family has called for calm after protests last week that condemned the United States for Kansi's execution.

Kansi back flew to Pakistan the day after the 1993 shootings. He disappeared for four years, spending most of his time in Afghanistan.

He was arrested in Pakistan by the U.S. Bederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1997 and was taken to the United States for trial.