More farms occupied amid rising violence

More white-owned farms were occupied on Thursday by government supporters as opposition leaders warned that growing "state-sponsored anarchy" threatened Zimbabwe's stability.

Four more farms were overrun on Wednesday night by men claiming to be liberation war veterans and a fifth was occupied after daybreak on Thursday in the Mutepatepa district northeast of the capital Harare, Reuters reported. Despite a court order outlawing the farm invasions, over 920 have been seized in an increasingly violent government-backed campaign which has
degenerated into arson attacks, beatings and shootings.

Two people have reportedly died, including a policemen who was shot dead at a farm in Marondera, 75 km east of Harare, allegedly by squatters resisting arrest for beating a white farmer and supporter of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). There have also been reports of
policemen being disarmed by squatters.

On Wednesday, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said it had recorded 50 cases of violence against CFU members and their workers. "The invasions have become more and more aggressive each day. Property has been destroyed, farmers and their workers have been beaten up," the independent 'Financial Gazette' reported a CFU official as saying.

The MDC said that several of its supporters have been attacked in
politically-motivated violence across the country and some have been forced to flee their homes. A pregnant woman died in political clashes in the town of Bindura, 40 km north of Harare, on Sunday.