Zimbabwe's main opposition formation said Tuesday that at least four of its members have been slain in a post-election offensive mounted by the ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe, which suffered setbacks in March 29 balloting.
Spokesman Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change formation led by Morgan Tsvangirai, a presidential candidate in the elections, told VOA that the four dead include Themba Muronde of Mudzi, Mashonaland East, and Tapiwa Mubwanda of Hurungwe, Mashonaland West, both longtime ruling party strongholds. Chamisa said the MDC formation was still trying to confirm the names of the other two.
Police sources said an autopsy was carried out on Mubwanda Tuesday in Chinhoyi, also in Mashonaland West Province, and that members of the Central Intelligence Organization have told his family to bury him or the CIO will do it.
The Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights issued a statement Tuesday saying that it is concerned with the upsurge in organized violence and torture since the elections. The organization said its members had seen and treated 157 injury cases resulting from organized violence and torture between March 29, election day, and Monday.
The report says such violence has been concentrated in the provinces of Manicaland, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West and Masvingo.
MDC supporters seeking refuge in Harare said even children, pregnant women and animals have been targeted. They reported that women have been abducted, stripped and raped by marauding war veterans and ZANU-PF youth militia.
They said animals are being burned alive and villages razed to the ground. Some 300 MDC supporters were being treated in hospitals as of Tuesday, sources said.
Mashonaland East MDC Organizing Secretary Kubvoruno Choga told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that he fled Mudzi to a safe house in Harare after he received word he was marked for death by ZANU-PF militants.
