Opposition parties vowed to continue strikes and anti-government protests yesterday despite police and troops crushing street demonstrations and arresting dozens of protesters.
Riot police and soldiers in troop carriers and tank-like armored cars fired guns and tear gas and assaulted protesters to break up demonstrations against President Robert Mugabe's rule across Zimbabwe.
The Movement for Democratic Change said the actions on Monday brought the country's economy to a standstill and organizers pledged a week of similar actions they say will mark most significant challenge to Mugabe's 23 years of increasingly dictatorial rule.
The group's secretary-general, Welshman Ncube, said violence against protesters by police and the military did not deter the party's leaders and supporters.
"What is left is for the people to press on for the next four days with the complete stay-away from work and massive demonstrations. People must all remain resolute. The end is in sight," Ncube said.
Zimbabwe is facing its worst political and economic crisis since independence in 1980. Foreign aid, investment and loans have dried up amid political violence, state-orchestrated human rights abuses, the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms and the conduct of disputed presidential elections last year.
Only international food aid has averted mass starvation. Zimbabwe faces record 269 percent inflation and acute shortages of hard currency, local money, gasoline, medicines and other essential imports and food.
The opposition leaders were rounded up in police raids on Monday under the country's draconian security laws that allow the government to ban any gathering.
One demonstrator was shot in the leg, and scores of others were forced to lie on sidewalks or the ground while police or soldiers beat them with rubber batons.
Soldiers and police manned roadblocks at key intersections.
Downtown Harare was mostly deserted on Monday. Banks, factories, post offices, schools and all downtown shops remained shut.
"It's like we are under armed occupation and some kind of curfew. It's frightening. We have seen police chasing people away," said Alex Sibanda, a businessman.
At least 154 people, most of them opposition activists or officials, were arrested across the country Monday, police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said in a statement.
One march was broken up in Bulawayo by riot police who beat three opposition supporters, before dragging them into a police truck, said democratic rights activist Jenni Williams.
Bvudzijena said police were forced to fire into the air in Highfield township in western Harare after opposition protesters tried to use a group of school children as human shields, an allegation the opposition denied.
Opposition officials said three people suffered gunshot wounds in that incident.
State television accused business owners of shutting out workers in support of the opposition strike.
Samuel Mbengegwi, the commerce minister, said government officials were carrying out "surveillance and monitoring" of such business owners who risked being stripped of their operating licenses.
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