Religious leaders held a special prayer session for Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's wife, who is battling breast cancer, reports said yesterday.

Endon Mahmood, 64, was described by doctors as being in a stable but weak condition last week when she returned from the United States where she spent more than three months undergoing chemotherapy.

Since then she has remained in hospital in Putrajaya, the nation's administrative centre outside Kuala Lumpur.

Special prayers

Religious leaders from the Hindu, Christian, Sikh and Buddhist faiths led a crowd of more than 200 people in the special prayers on Saturday.

"We are all praying that (Endon) will recover as soon as possible," a local councillor who organised the prayers, P Kamalanathan, was quoted as saying in the Star daily.

The first lady, whose mother was Japanese, has been living in the shadow of breast cancer since she was diagnosed in 2003, the same year her twin sister Noraini died of the same disease.

Endon has been open about her illness, using it to promote cancer awareness campaigns, and Malaysians have followed her progress closely.