ZIMBABWE - Human-rights group calls for probe into babies death

Harare, Zimbabwe (AP):

Human-rights activists yesterday called for an urgent investigation into the high death rate of babies in communities resettled by Zimbabwe's government after a widely condemned slum clearance drive.

Amnesty International said that 21 babies have recently died in a community in southern Harare because of a lack of basic care facilities. Those living in the new, inadequate government housing and adjacent shacks were better off in their former shanty dwellings, the group said yesterday.

Simeon Mawanza, a spokesman for the rights group, said that expectant mothers now have to walk up to six miles (eight kilometres) to visit a clinic, and several have miscarried on the way.

The United Nation estimated 700,000 people were displaced in the brutal, allegedly politically driven demolition of slums and market stalls throughout Zim-babwe in 2005, known as 'Operation Murambvatsina', or 'Clean out the trash', by President Robert Mugabe's then-ruling party.

Mugabe's opponents allege that the operation was aimed to disrupt support for the political opposition in its urban strongholds in the same year as elections.