Zimbabwe MP's home attacked

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) -- Hundreds of opposition brigade youths moved in to protect the home of a member of parliament following an attack by so-called war veterans.

A mob of more than 100 people attacked the house of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP Willias Madzimure on Wednesday while he was attending parliament, according to the privately owned Daily News.

Two security guards and a maid were injured in the attack as the mob smashed windows, stole household items and attempted to set it on fire with molotov cocktails.

The house is located in the Kambuzuma suburb of the Zimbabwean capital Harare, which Madzimure represents. His family, including two small children, were in the house during the attack. Police arrested two suspects, the newspaper added.

It is the second attack on Madzimure's home. In the first attack, a mob surrounded his house and demanded he come out so they could kill him.

Madzimure said he believed it was part of a new terror campaign on white-owned farms and businesses. The war veterans support the government's land reform programme that would take farm lands from white farmers and return them to blacks.

A senior opposition politician said he believed the reason for the attack was more sinister, describing it as a coordinated destabilisation campaign by the war veterans that began with the attacks on white-owned farms, then white-owned businesses, and now opposition politicians.

Political analysts say war veterans played a pivotal rule in the ruling ZANU-PF party's narrow victory at last June's general election by carrying out a violent campaign which killed at least 31 people, most of them opposition supporters.

The MDC won nearly half of 120 elected seats, mainly in urban areas.

The war veterans also led the invasion from February of white-owned farms in what they said was a show of support for the government's land reform programme.

But critics said the drive was aimed at drawing the electorate's attention from the country's worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, which many blame on mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe's administration.