Harare - The death toll in the six-week campaign of violence against supporters of Zimbabwe's pro-democracy opposition party, has reached over 50, its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, announced Tuesday.

"Many more thousands have been injured, displaced or had their houses destroyed and property looted," he said at the headquarters of his Movement for Democratic Change.

He was inaugurating a 150 trillion Zimbabwe dollar (about 30 million US dollar) trust fund, set up for the victims of violence, especially for orphaned families, people whose homes have been destroyed and the maimed.

A wave of savage beatings and killings followed elections on March 29 when the MDC inflicted the first election defeat on president Robert Mugabe and his ZANU(PF) party, winning a parliamentary majority and taking more votes in the presidential ballot than the 84-year-old president who has been in power since independence in 1980.

However, because Tsvangirai failed - according to results issued by the state-run election commission after it had sat on them for a month - to secure more than 50 per cent of the votes, a second round run-off has to be held between him and Mugabe.

Doctors, churches and human rights groups have confirmed that in all but a small minority of cases, the victims have stated that the attacks were carried out members of ZANU(PF) militias and, to a lesser extent, the police and the army. The government denies the charges, and claims that the MDC is responsible, but has yet to provide evidence.

Tsvangirai has visited hospitals where the injured are being treated, and on Sunday attended the funeral of an MDC activist who was abducted two weeks ago, and his decomposing body found a week later in a farming area just east of Harare.

"I have been angered by the fact that a man (Mugabe)who once offered the people so much is refusing to accept change," Tsvangirai said. "But most of all, I have been heartened by the courage and resolve of those targeted by this regime."

He also visited an emergency refugee centre in the MDC headquarters, where an entire floor is crowded with about 300 men, women and children who have fled the rural areas for the relative safety of the capital.

Medical doctors who have been treating the injured say they have confirmed the deaths of 34 people so far. "But it could easily be 50," said one who asked not to be named. "Some have been buried without being taken to hospital, others crawled away in the bush to hide, and died there.

"Now we are getting more and more cases of people being abducted, disappearing and then their bodies being found in the bush where they were dumped. There were several cases where people have been missing since being taken last week."

The latest known fatality is Shepherd Jani, an MDC district official in the Murewha area about 100 kilometres north-east of Harare, whose body was found on Sunday in the Goromonzi farming district just outside Harare, where the bodies of three other abducted victims were discovered last week.

Tsvangirai has appealed to international observer groups - which have to be approved by Mugabe's government - to dispatch observer teams into Zimbabwe by the end of the month, in the hope that their presence will force the regime to suspend the violence, rather than waiting until two weeks before the run-off election. (dpa)