HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -
Police fought running battles until dawn Friday with supporters of a general strike called to protest a government campaign against shack dwellers and street traders, the strike organizer said.
Lovemore Madhuku, the head of the group that called the strike, said anti-riot police beat and fired tear gas at protesters and shot bullets over their heads in the Chitungwiza township south of Harare.
The violence erupted, he said, after police set up roadblocks on all routes in and out of Chitungwiza and other crowded southern township and searched people after forcing them to leave their vehicles.
Madhuku said he did not know how many people had been injured or arrested. Police could not be reached for comment.
Most businesses remained open with skeleton staffs Friday, the second day of the two-day strike. Police have the power to seize the goods and trading license of any business that fails to open.
State radio described the strike Friday as "a failed attempt to sabotage Zimbabwe's economic turnaround."
President Robert Mugabe criticized the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change for "sacrificing the interests of the people of Zimbabwe in a bid to serve their colonial masters," the station reported.
Economists said five years of unprecedented economic decline in Zimbabwe have left only about 800,000 of its 12 million people with jobs in the formal sector, making it difficult to gauge the effect of the strike.
Madhuku claimed it had received at least 50 percent support in most towns and cities despite repeated police threats to "deal ruthlessly" with anyone who supported the strike. He conceded, however, the strike failed to achieve the economic paralysis intended.
The strike was called to protest a government crackdown in which police have torched or demolished thousands of shacks of the urban poor and arrested at least 30,000 street vendors.
The government said the crackdown is a cleanup campaign for cities and an attempt to stop the activities of black market traders, which it calls economic saboteurs who hoard and sell goods in short supply in the country.
The United Nations, which estimated at least 200,000 people have been left homeless by the crackdown, has called the campaign a human rights violation.
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