Zimbabwe riot police arrested more than 200 opposition activists and officials today during a meeting they were holding at their party headquarters, an opposition spokesman said.
"They raided the offices at Harvest House. They had no search warrant. They gave no reasons but they have taken in our members who were holding meetings there," Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said.
"We believe this is part of the harassment that we are being subjected to."
Police wielding pistols and batons raided the meeting, which did not include top opposition figures. Activists were taken away in three police vans, said Mr Chamisa.
Police officials were not immediately available for comment.
The arrests came a day after Zimbabwe police extended a ban on political rallies and protests in Harare which the country's embattled opposition has likened to "a state of emergency".
President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF administration has routinely used riot police squads to crush anti-government rallies in the southern African country, which is suffering from severe shortages of food and fuel. Tensions rose sharply in early March after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and dozens of other MDC members sustained injuries after being arrested by police at an aborted prayer rally in Harare.
Opposition groups and Western powers have accused Mr Mugabe of widespread human rights abuses in a crackdown on dissent. But he has remained defiant, deflecting criticism while facing an economic meltdown that critics blame on his policies.
The 83-year-old Mr Mugabe accuses the MDC of being stooges of Zimbabwe's former colonial power Britain and trying to oust his government as punishment for seizing and redistributing white-owned commercial farms to landless blacks.
Critics say Mr Mugabe has mismanaged Zimbabwe's economy, sending the once-prosperous nation into a relentless crisis marked by annual inflation of more than 3,700 per cent and unemployment of more than 80 per cent.