Zimbabwe's main opposition party on Friday suspended a top official after he publicly called on party leader and former premier Morgan Tsvangirai to resign over his defeat at the polls last year.

Elton Mangoma, a former energy minister and deputy treasurer of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was suspended pending an appearance before a disciplinary tribunal.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has thrown his weight behind Uganda's draconian anti-gay laws and hinted at a crackdown on gays in his own country, state media reported Monday.

He castigated the West for punishing Kampala with aid cuts after President Yoweri Museveni signed into law a bill that banned homosexuality in the east African country.

A petrol bomb hit the home of top Zimbabwe opposition official and former finance minister Tendai Biti Tuesday, a party spokesman said, the second such attack in three years.

"Our secretary general, Tendai Biti told us that his house was attacked early this morning," Douglas Mwonzora, of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told Agence France Presse, adding the explosion did not injure anyone.

Thousands of people turned out Sunday to wish happy birthday to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who threw 90 balloons into the air to mark his 90th year and continuing hold on power.

Fresh off the plane from Singapore, where he had traveled for eye surgery last week, Mugabe was in typically defiant mood as he launched his birthday celebrations at Marondera stadium, east of the capital Harare.

A Zimbabwean court on Friday ordered that former U.S. congressman Melvin Reynolds be deported, after he pleaded guilty to flouting immigration laws for staying in the country on an expired visa.

The Harare magistrate's court ruled that Reynolds, a 62-year-old former congressman from Illinois, be expelled immediately after he pays a fine of $100 or serves five days in prison.

Former U.S. congressman Melvin Reynolds has been arrested in Zimbabwe, an immigration official said Tuesday, without giving details.

"We are with him and we are conducting investigations. That is all I can say at the moment," Ario Mabika, a spokesman for Zimbabwe's immigration department told AFP.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has pardoned 2,000 prisoners, mostly women and juveniles, a move that should ease congestion in the country's jails, a government notice showed Monday.

The numbers of pardoned prisoners amounts to more than 10 percent of the prison population, which stood at 18,460 last year against a holding capacity of 17,000.

Africa's oldest leader and Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, whose state of health has sparked speculation in recent years, on Tuesday credited his longevity to "God's will".

"I do not know how I have come to live this long. It is all God's will," Mugabe, who turns 90 on February 21, said at the burial of his younger sister Bridget.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has made his first public appearance this year, quashing speculation about his health as he mourns his sister's death.

State television on Monday showed images of Mugabe greeting government officials and members of his ZANU-PF party at his official residence in the capital Harare.

Around a million poverty-stricken Zimbabweans face hunger after the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) announced Tuesday it was cutting food rations due to a cash crunch.

"We'd been hoping to have scaled up our seasonal relief operations... in the coming months with distributions of food and, in some areas, cash," Tomson Phiri, WFP spokesman in Zimbabwe, said as the country enters the peak of the so-called hunger season.