Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Wednesday said the level of violence in the country was escalating -- and it blamed the police and military.

"There has not been any slowdown in the violence, it's escalating," MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said.

"There are 20 people still detained in hospital from the last couple of days. This morning we got reports from several different townships in Harare from people who had been brutalised last night."

Also on Wednesday, security police raided the offices of Amani Trust, a charity aiding victims of political violence, staff said.

Further details were not immediately available.

Meanwhile, MDC MP Roy Bennett said 60 uniformed members of the paramilitary and regular police and soldiers descended on his farm, Charleswood, in the eastern district of Chimanimani and were forcing workers out of their homes.

Bennett had High Court orders which barred government security agents from entering his farm which has been under virtual siege by them for nearly three years.

"They are ignoring everything," he said. "This has happened so many times before, I have lost count."

He was speaking from Harare and had been contacted by telephone from the farm. "All but a few senior guys ran away when they arrived," he said. "It's happening right now and I don't have a clear picture, so I don't know if there's been violence." For three days last week, police and soldiers staged successive attacks on a farm in Ruwa leased by Bennett on Harare's outskirts, severely injuring 89 of his workers and killing one.

The MDC brought the country to a standstill on Tuesday and Wednesday last week in a national stayaway called as the start of what the party said was a campaign of peaceful national mass action to bring an end to Mugabe's 23 year rule.

The MDC delivered a 15-point ultimatum to Mugabe to end the repression, lawlessness and persecution by March 31 or face "popular mass action to regain the people's liberties, freedoms and dignity." Mugabe's reaction was to vow that the MDC would be "consumed in the fire" of state wrath. Government security forces and ruling ZANU(PF) parties have since embarked on what observers say is a ruthless clampdown.

United States Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher said this week that since the stayaway, Mugabe's regime had "embarked on a massive retribution campaign against opposition officials, supporters and other critics of the regime."

MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai said on Tuesday "more than 1000" people had been forced out of their homes or arrested in the clampdown. Over 500 have been reported arrested since the stayaway, while reports in the state press say a total of 155 people have since appeared in court on charges of "public violence" and of defying laws that made public demonstrations illegal - Sapa