Zimbabwe police have arrested more than 22,000 people as a fierce blitz on illegal stores and shantytowns gathers pace, sending homeless people fleeing for the countryside, according to a report in the state Herald newspaper.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980.
"We have so far arrested a total of 22,735 people and recovered 33.5 kilogrammes of gold from 47 illegal gold panners and 26,000 litres of fuel," Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena told the newspaper.
Bvudzijena was not immediately reachable for comment.
Zimbabwe's main opposition party, which draws the bulk of its support in urban areas, has called on people to mobilise against the crackdown, which has also been criticised by religious leaders.
President Robert Mugabe's government says the campaign is meant to stamp out black market trading and other crime in slums around Harare and other cities.
Police have used sledgehammers and bulldozers to demolish thousands of illegal shacks and torched others, leaving residents scrambling to secure their possessions before their homes and businesses are destroyed.
Many of those displaced by the crackdown are seeking to return to their family homes in the countryside, although a desperate fuel shortage caused by Zimbabwe's deepening economic crisis has made transport difficult.
Zimbabwe has seen its economy contract by some 30 percent over the past five years and is reeling from shortages of foreign exchange, fuel and other key commodities amid sharp drops in international investment and tourism.
Critics say the crisis has been caused in large part by Mugabe's controversial policy of seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks - a move they say all but destroyed the key commercial agricultural sector.
Mugabe, 81 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, lays the blame for the crisis on domestic and foreign opponents of his land reform programme, who he says are bent on sabotaging the country.