ZIMBABWE:Riot police broke up a prayer rally in Harare yesterday, arresting the country's main opposition leader and shooting dead a protester against President Robert Mugabe.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said its leader Morgan Tsvangirai was detained and seriously assaulted as heavily armed police suppressed what they described as an unlawful demonstration. The MDC said a number of Mr Tsvangirai's aides were also badly beaten, while a party activist had been shot dead.
Police confirmed a man had been killed in the security operation.
The crackdown came as Mr Mugabe gave his strongest indication yet that he would seek re-election in 2008, giving him another six years in power. "If the party says so, I will stand," the president told the Southern Times, a regional paper co-published in Namibia and Zimbabwe.
If Mr Mugabe wins next year's election, he could rule Zimbabwe until 2014, by which time, if still alive, he would be 90.
The growing political unrest coincides with a deepening of the country's economic crisis. Zimbabwe's central statistics office has reported inflation to be at an all-time high of 1,730 per cent.
Thousands of public servants have threatened to go on strike, with the country's judges issuing the latest in a long line of pay demands this weekend.
The opposition claims that members of both the police and army are now turning against the president. However, branches of the police loyal to the president are fighting back with what the MDC described as "ever more brutal tactics".
Yesterday's prayer rally followed a ban on political demonstrations in the Highfield township, where anti-Mugabe sentiment has grown in recent times.
Witnesses said that police engaged in skirmishes with rock-throwing youths in the Harare suburb, where the opposition-aligned Save Zimbabwe Coalition had called for a Sunday vigil.
A spokesman for the MDC said that Mr Tsvangirai had been arrested with other opposition leaders as he was driving out of Highfield. "We don't know where he is being held at the moment," the party spokesman said.
Also reportedly arrested were Arthur Mutambara, who leads another faction of the MDC, and Lovemore Madhuku, a member of a pressure group known as the National Constitutional Assembly.
On Saturday, police accused some elements in the MDC of hiring and arming "thugs" to attack officers. "As far as we are concerned, that is a political rally . . . and we are going to stop that meeting," national police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena told a news conference.
Mr Tsvangirai had just returned to Harare after addressing a media event in Johannesburg at which he criticised Zimbabwe's neighbours for failing to speak out on the political crisis.
The MDC leader told people attending the meeting in Johannesburg that members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) were "part of the problem . . . instead of being part of the solution". He continued: "They are tacitly supporting Mugabe on issues where they know Mugabe is not right. It's time they came on board and spoke with one voice on issues in Zimbabwe."
The comments have been seen as a criticism of South African president Thabo Mbeki, who met Mr Mugabe in Ghana last week as part of his controversial policy of "quiet diplomacy" with Zimbabwe.
Other SADC nations follow a similar line, although Zambia has said there was a "serious problem" with Zimbabwe.