By Paul Nyathi|Reports coming through to ZimEye.com indicate that police and military officers are on a massive crackdown abducting people in the capital and other urban centres accusing them of taking part in what appears to have been a widespread breakdown of public order linked to food and fuel shortages protests in the country.

Activists, lawyers and other citizens who spoke to ZimEye.com described a wave of abductions in and around Harare. The sources indicated that police cells across the city are “full to capacity”, packed with large numbers of men, women and children.

“The internet shutdown has been [used] to cover up a massive operation of repression,” said Doug Coltart, a lawyer who met with more than 30 detainees at the Harare’s central prison on Wednesday.

“Most said they had been abducted from homes by masked men with AK47s who dragged them out and beat them up. They are being held without charges or representation, with no food or water … The brutality of what is going on is shocking.”

Zimbabweans went wild during a national strike called from Monday by unions in response to a steep rise in fuel prices ordered by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.