Supporters of Zimbabwe's government have killed one man and abducted and assaulted several others in an attack on a village, it was claimed yesterday.
Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe met his cabinet and scheduled a politburo meeting to discuss the country's land crisis.
"About 400 ZANU-PF supporters carrying axes, iron bars and other weapons descended on our village," Mr Elliot Pfebver said by telephone from a village on the eastern border with Mozambique.
Mr Pfebver, an opposition Movement for Democratic Change candidate in parliamentary elections expected in June, said the mob abducted five people, including his father and his farmworker brother, Matthew.
"We found Matthew's body today while Daddy returned home bleeding from severe injuries," he said, adding that three others were released unharmed.
The killing, which has not been confirmed by police, takes the death toll to at least 15 in nine weeks of escalating political violence around Zimbabwe.
Britain, the United States and the Western donor community are pressing Mr Mugabe to call an end to the political violence and to the often violent occupation of white-owned farms. Mr Mugabe, whose ruling party could face its first real poll challenge since independence in 1980, has not condemned the violence.
Mr Mugabe's government remained silent after a six-hour cabinet meeting called to discuss the land crisis, but a senior minister said the ruling party's influential politburo would discuss the issue today.
The meeting of the 25-member politburo will be held after Mr Mugabe unveils ZANU-PF's election manifesto this morning. However, there was no indication from the cabinet session of an election date.
The session was the first meeting of the cabinet since a ministerial delegation returned from London last week empty-handed after talks on British aid for Zimbabwe's land reform programme.
In London, Mr Mugabe's handling of the land crisis dominated a Commonwealth committee meeting. At home, white farmers forced the suspension of tobacco sales that are the country's biggest single export.
The war veterans, some of whom fought in the 1970s for the former Rhodesia's independence, have invaded hundreds of white-owned farms.
Veterans' leader Mr Chenjerai Hunzvi is due in court again today to explain what steps he had taken to end farm invasions twice declared illegal.
If the court is not satisfied, he will be sentenced for contempt of court on Friday.
A farming source in the town of Karoi, north-west of the capital Harare, said veterans had stepped up attacks on black farmworkers. A group of 150 veterans attacked workers in five farm villages around Karoi on Monday night.
Britain took its campaign to rally international pressure against Zimbabwe to the Commonwealth yesterday, calling for an end to violence and land seizures in its former colony.
The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said he hoped the eight-nation Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group meeting in London would send a clear message to Mr Mugabe to halt occupations.
The tension is taking a toll on Zimbabwe's economy, and for the second week running tobacco deliveries at the country's annual auction sales remained very low yesterday. Later, farmers angry over low prices forced auctioneers to close the opening day of sales of burley tobacco.
Farmers tore up their tickets when they discovered that prices were down between 15 to 20 cents a kilogram from last year.