This is the latest in a string of deaths and violence following March’s elections
A week before run-off elections are set to happen, Zimbabwe’s opposition party claims they’ve been the targets of an alarming number attacks by the government. In the latest incident, the wife of the mayor of the nation’s capital, Harare , (who is a member of the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change) was found murdered Thursday, reports CNN. The wife, Abigail Chiroto, 27, was kidnapped Tuesday along with her 4-year-old son. According to an MDC spokesman, some of the kidnappers wore military uniforms. The kidnappers ended up releasing Chiroto’s son, but her savagely beaten body was found in a mortuary near her home. She was beaten so badly that officials could barely recognize her. “It’s way out of the ordinary. It’s callous,” said Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the party. He also said that her murder, along with four other activists who were abducted and murdered Tuesday, brings the number of party members killed since March’s elections to 70. But a spokesman from President Robert Mugabe’s party, Zanu-PF, said they have nothing to do with the deaths, and suggested that the number of MDC members killed might be exaggerated. “They are claiming anyone who dies. They phone CNN. Whenever someone dies in the hospital, they rush to claim them,” he told CNN. Chiroto’s husband, Emmanuel Chiroto, was not home when his wife and child were kidnapped.

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