Three Zimbabwean opposition activists who were seeking to get medical treatment abroad were detained trying to leave the country, a party official said.

Arthur Mutambara, a senior member of the Movement for Democratic Change, was one of those arrested at Harare airport, said Roy Bennett, the movement's exiled treasurer-general on Saturday.

Also arrested in a separate incident were Grace Kwinje and Sekai Holland, two women who were to receive specialised medical treatment in South Africa, he said.

"We are not sure why they were arrested. Tensions are very high," he said.

Violent end to protest 

Tawanda Mutasah, director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, said the two women, among the most severely injured when Zimbabwean police broke up a protest gathering Sunday, were due to travel to Johannesburg to receive specialist post-traumatic care.

He said the ambulance carrying the women from Harare's Avenues clinic to the airport, where they were to leave in a medical rescue aircraft, was stopped on the tarmac by officers from Zimbabwe's security forces.

The women's passports were taken and they were told they needed a clearance certificate from the Department of Health. They were then instructed to go to Harare's central police station but were later allowed to return to the clinic under police guard.

"That the Zimbabwean government now resorts to arresting people in ambulances in clear need of specialist care, is an indication of the repressive lengths they're prepared to go," said Mutasah

He added that lawyers for the women were trying to get a court order to allow them to receive treatment.

Bennett also said that, according to reports from Harare, police took the body of Gift Tandare, an activist shot dead by police, and performed their own burial.