HARARE, Zimbabwe — An independent doctors organisation said yesterday that hundreds of Zimbabweans have been injured, maimed or traumatised in a surge of political violence in the past month by security authorities.Those injured since police violently crushed a prayer vigil in Harare on March 11 include political activists, six of who suffered gunshot wounds, including one activist shot dead, the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said.

At least 49 pro-democracy leaders, including Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, needed hospitalisation for serious injuries, it said.

The doctors group, whose members include health services staff and most of the nation’s independent physicians and who have treated victims of assault, publicised an international petition yesterday calling for an end to state orchestrated violence and torture.

Members of the organisation trying to record the tally of treated cases were routinely intimidated, the petition said.

“Efforts taken by health professionals to document and prevent human rights abuses met further intimidation by security forces,” it said.

In one incident, eight victims of police assault were forcibly removed from a private health facility, where police had first taken them, without the consent of doctors there. All eight had been denied medical care in custody, the doctors said.

“Such behaviour by security forces continues to intimidate health workers who treat victims of organised violence and torture,” the petition statement said.

The doctors said Tsvangirai collapsed in police custody after being assaulted March 11. He was taken to a government emergency unit where a junior night duty doctor was made to examine him under the guard of armed police without consulting senior colleagues.

The emergency unit was cordoned off and treatment was superficial and ineffective. The opposition leader was taken back to jail “despite have lost sufficient blood to lose consciousness again,” the organisation said.

It said such abuses came amid already collapsing health services and “fragile living conditions” of ordinary Zimbabweans.

The doctors noted life expectancy for women in the troubled southern Africa nation was now 34 years, the lowest in the world, maternal mortality was rising and 21 percent of adults were officially estimated as being HIV/AIDS infected.

In the worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, employment stood at 80 percent and inflation exceeded 2,000 percent, the highest rate in the world.

“People do not have the funds to buy medication and good nutrition is almost impossible to afford,” said the petition, signed so far by top physicians at leading medical and academic institutions in South Africa, the United States and Europe.

The petition said that since March 11, Zimbabwe doctors recorded 182 cases of severe to moderate soft tissue injures from beatings; four people, including Tsvangirai, suffered head injuries; 11 had fractures to the arms, legs and ribs, three of those with multiple fractures and at least 34 others were treated for swelling, bruising and lacerations.

Six were wounded when police fired live ammunition. Opposition official Gift Tandare was shot dead on March 11 in the Harare township of Highfield.

“There are hundreds of others who have been injured, maimed and traumatised” in a continuing clampdown against government opponents by police, paramilitary officers, security agents of the Central Intelligence Organisation and ruling party militants, the doctors group said.

Armed security authorities targeting opposition supporters have imposed informal curfews in several township suburbs, shutting down bars and shops after dusk, and searching homes.

The opposition insists at least 600 of its officials and supporters have been arrested and were open to assault since early March.

President Robert Mugabe has admitted Tsvangirai was assaulted March 11, saying he was “thoroughly beaten up by police” and had “asked for it.”

He told youth militants of his ruling ZANU PF party the injured opposition leaders would “get arrested and get bashed” again if they protested against the government because the “police have a right to bash.”

Mugabe also described the youth militants as a “big hard-knuckled fist” that could be easily summoned into action by party leaders against opponents.

Police say six officers have been injured in the month of unrest and what they call “an orgy of violence” in an alleged campaign of terror and gasoline bombings by opposition, allegations Tsvangirai denies.