Zimbabwean radio building blown up

The building's roof caved in after the blast, according to the BBC's Lewis Machipisa in Harare.

Staff at the Voice of the People station told the BBC that they suspected that the building had been bombed - there has been no confirmation of this from the police.

The incident occurs against a background of government action to control the independent media and criticisms by ministers that the media is conducting a campaign against the government.

Journalists in Zimbabwe accuse the government of trying to muzzle the media.

Bomb?

The Reuters news agency reported that a bomb had caused the blast.

It says that two armed men confronted the security guard on duty at the privately-run radio station shortly after midnight and told him to leave.

The agency says Takura Zhangasha, an advocate with the Media Institute of Southern Africa told them that the men " then hurled an explosive device into the one-storey building".

The French agency, AFP, also reported that a bomb exploded early on Thursday morning at the Voice of the People offices.

New media laws introduced in Zimbabwe in March restricted the activities of private radio stations.

The Voice of the People recorded radio material which was sent to the Netherlands from where it was broadcast on short-wave to avoid breaking the media curbs.

Government hostility

Workers arrived for work at Voice of the People on Thursday morning to find that the building was in ruins.

The BBC's Lewis Machipisa reports that the staff said that one of their colleagues had not turned up for work but they did not know why.

In the past few years there have been physical attacks on the independent media, with two bomb attacks against the Daily News newspaper.

More recently Zimbabwean and foreign journalists based there have been arrested by the government. Several have been charged with offences under the new media laws.

In July, the courts acquitted an Andrew Meldrum, an American journalist based in Zimbabwe, of breaking new, strict media laws.