Former UN chief Kofi Annan, meanwhile, urged African leaders on Saturday to step in and help resolve the country's political crisis.

Three weeks after the March 29 vote, Zimbabweans are still awaiting results of the presidential balloting, and now the opposition's landmark victory in the parliamentary vote is being called into question.

An international rights group said on Saturday that the ruling party was setting up "torture camps" to intimidate opposition supporters. The opposition reported four more supporters had died in attacks they attributed to Mugabe loyalists - bringing the number of reported deaths of activists to 10.

Recount begins

Zimbabwe electoral officials began recounting ballots for a couple of a dozen legislative seats being challenged - an exercise that could overturn the opposition's majority win. Most of the seats being recounted were declared for opposition candidates, including in President Robert Mugabe's home district of Zvimba.

State-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp said the full recount would take up to three days.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai claims he beat Mugabe outright and that the delay in reporting results is part of a fraud plot. As Zimbabweans await the vote, attacks on opposition supporters have mounted.

Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change called the recount a "rogue and flawed process," saying in a statement on Saturday that it had "learnt with disgust" that a number of ballot boxes were arriving "without seals" at recount centres.

The opposition also criticised police for doing nothing to stop increasing violence against its supporters.

"Rural areas have been made no go areas, and defenceless people have been forced to flee their homes and are sleeping in the mountains," the opposition statement said. "But the police are not taking any action, despite the international community being fully aware of what is happening."

New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that "torture and violence are surging in Zimbabwe."

Torture camps set up

The ruling party, it said, was setting up "torture camps to systematically target, beat and torture people suspected of having voted for the MDC in last month's elections."

Annan, himself an African who recently helped broker a peace deal after Kenya's contested elections, questioned whether leaders on the continent were doing enough to help Zimbabwe resolve what he called "a rather dangerous situation."

"Where are the Africans? Where are the leaders and the countries in the region? What are they doing? How can they help resolve the situation?" he told journalists in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

"It's a serious crisis that will impact beyond Zimbabwe and we do have a responsibility to work with them to find a viable solution," Annan said, adding that he had met with MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti on Friday.

In Mugabe's home district of Zvimba, no reporters were allowed to witness the recount, which was being conducted in the presence of party officials, as well as local and regional observers. The Southern African Development Community said it sent 50 monitors, according to Zimbabwe's state-owned Herald newspaper.

Reporters glimpsed one room where ballot boxes were being kept under armed guard.