Addis Ababa, Thursday

Three people were shot dead in the Ethiopian capital today, doctors said, in a third straight day of political unrest that has killed at least 42 and stirred fears for the giant African country’s stability.

The violence has prompted Britain to warn its citizens against non-essential travel to Ethiopia and an alarmed African Union called on both government and opposition in the country, the Horn of Africa’s dominant power, to show restraint.

Witnesses said police in Addis Ababa opened fire to disperse anti-government protests in several pockets of unrest across the city, a bastion of opposition to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Doctors said that in addition to the three killed today, the overnight death toll among those wounded on Tuesday had risen to eight from three.

"We have one person dead. He was 19 years old and hit in the chest," a doctor in Zewditu Hospital said.

Another doctor in the Black Lion hospital said a 60-year-old man was killed in unrest in an eastern suburb of Addis Ababa. The third doctor said a man in his 20s was shot a few miles from St Paul’s Hospital and was dead on arrival.

Police have also detained scores of people including human rights activists, residents said.

The violence broke out on Tuesday when riot police clashed with demonstrators apparently heeding a call by the opposition Coalition for Democracy and Unity (CUD) for renewed protests against a May 15 poll it says was rigged.

"From last evening police have been rounding up CUD zonal leaders and human rights activists," Adam Melaku, head of the independent Ethiopian Human Rights Council, told Reuters.

Residents said police went from house to house picking up mainly young men suspected of involvement in the violence, which followed months of worsening tensions between the government and opposition in sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation.

Information Minister Berhan Hailu confirmed the arrests but did not say how many had been detained. He repeated an accusation that CUD leaders had been responsible for stoking the bloodshed.

"There is no witch-hunt against CUD members except those involved in inciting violence," he told Reuters.

Political tensions have deepened since a multi-party vote in May handed Meles a third five-year term in power, despite a big swing to the opposition. In June, post-election clashes killed 36 people in Addis Ababa, in the capital’s worst violence since bloody student riots in 2001. Foreign observers broadly endorsed the poll results but noted some irregularities.

Diplomats regarded the election as a litmus test of Meles’s commitment to bringing democracy to a country still struggling to shake off the effects of centuries of feudalism followed by nearly 20 years of Marxism under dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Washington condemned "cynical, deliberate" attempts to stoke violence in the capital and appealed to the opposition not to provoke unrest. It also urged the government to investigate the unrest and release all detainees.

Washington has urged the CUD to use peaceful means to pursue its grievances and to take up its seats in parliament, something it has refused to do in protest at alleged rigging.

Special forces patrolled the streets, where shops were closed in part to mark the Muslim Eid al-Fitr

festival.