Over 200,000 people took part in the demonstration in Minsk, the Viasna human rights centre said.

Several hundred women marched across the capital of Belarus in heavy rain Saturday to demand the resignation of the country's authoritarian president, continuing more than 2 1/2 months of protests against his challenged reelection to a sixth term.

Hundreds of women calling for the authoritarian president to step down protested in Belarus' capital on Saturday, continuing the large demonstrations that have rocked the country since early August.

On Saturday, at least 5,000 people had marched through the city demanding the release of a jailed opposition leader, in the latest in a wave of mass protests after the Aug 9 presidential vote.

Masked men detained Belarusian protest leader Maria Kolesnikova in central Minsk on Monday morning and drove her away in a van and two of her allies also disappeared later, the opposition movement said.

Authorities in Belarus detained scores of university students who took to the streets Tuesday to demand that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko resign after an election the opposition has denounced as rigged.

Belarus opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova and the team of jailed opposition figure Viktor Babariko said on Monday they were forming a new political party called Together, a video shared online showed.

Lukashenko, who turned 66 on Sunday, is struggling to contain weeks of protests and strikes since winning an Aug. 9 election his opponents say was rigged. He denies electoral fraud and has said the protests are backed from abroad.

"I appeal for dialog, to refuse violence and respect justice and rights," the pontiff said in his Sunday Angelus message, speaking from his balcony in St. Peter's Square.

Protests began late on Aug. 9 at the closing of presidential elections. Official results say the authoritarian Lukashenko, in office since 1994, won a sixth term in a landslide with about 80 per cent of the vote.