Zimbabwean authorities have continued demolishing huts and evicted people west of the capital, witnesses said, defying UN demands to halt the much condemned urban renewal program that the world body says has left 700,000 people homeless.
In Geneva, the Red Cross asked for $1.9 million to provide emergency relief to victims of the devastating government-led cleanup. It said the money was for tents, blankets, soap, mosquito nets, water and purifying tablets for the homeless.
The government authorities came at night, beat people and burned huts, at Porta Farm, 25 miles west of Harare, a settlement the government set up in 1991 to house 3,000 squatters so they would not be seen by visiting Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, a witness said. The number of inhabitants has grown to 30,000 in the past 14 years.
Thousands of people were told they have to move to rural areas, said the witness, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
The government of President Robert Mugabe made no comment about the demolitions and evictions part of a larger program that began in May to clear out urban slums,
But Mr Mugabe's government has previously defended Operation Murambatsvina or "Drive Out Trash" as a necessary urban cleanup drive to reduce crime and restore order in overcrowded slums and illegal markets, and has promised to help the displaced rebuild.
Zimbabwe's opposition says the demolitions are aimed at breaking up its strongholds among the urban poor and forcing them into rural areas where they can be more easily controlled by chiefs sympathetic to the government.
Last week, the United Nations made public a report by its envoy saying the demolitions had "unleashed chaos and untold human suffering" in a country already gripped by economic chaos and shortages.