By Peta Thornycroft, Basildon Peta & Sapa-DPA-AP
Harare - Zimbabwe police have detained South African and Zimbabwean church leaders trying to help thousands made homeless by "Operation Drive-Out Trash".
In the ongoing purge of Zimbabwe's urban poor on Thursday, armed riot police and ruling Zanu-PF youth militia rounded up hundreds of homeless people - including infants sheltering in churches in Bulawayo.
The harassment of the clergymen happened as an aid agency, Action Aid International, issued a damning report on "Operation Murambatsvina" and its impact on the poor.
KwaZulu-Natal Bishop Rubin Phillip said on Thursday that he and three other clergymen were arrested in Bulawayo on Wednesday night and only released at about 4am on Thursday.
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Philip is part of a South African Council of Churches delegation in Zimbabwe which announced it was launching a major humanitarian operation with local churches and NGOs to help thousands of those displaced.
Before Philip's arrest, the police and the dreaded state spy agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation, had summoned two senior clergymen in the eastern town of Mutare.
They quizzed them on the reasons for providing "negative" reports to United Nations envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka during her two-week visit to Zimbabwe to probe the demolitions on behalf of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's national airline has had to cancel flights on some of its established routes, including the popular Harare-to-London route, owing to its worst fuel shortage in years, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.
Air Zimbabwe spokesperson David Mwenga told the Herald that some of Air Zimbabwe's flights had been suspended because of a shortage of jet aviation fuel, but he did not specify the routes.
An unnamed airline official, told the paper that flights to South Africa, Britain and the Victoria Falls, "were suspended due to the shortages of fuel". - Mercury Foreign Service
- This article was originally published on page 3 of The Mercury on July 22, 2005
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