U.N. humanitarian envoy Jan Egeland tramped through deep mud in squalid camps housing victims of Zimbabwe's shantytown demolitions on Monday (December 5), and said those living there were in tremendous need. President Robert Mugabe's government has bulldozed urban slums and what it called illegal structures in an operation the U.N. says left 700,000 people homeless or without a livelihood and affected 2.4 million others. Egeland, the top U.N. official to visit since the crackdown ended in May, visited people living in makeshift plastic-sheeting shelters in Hatcliffe 20 km (12 miles) outside Harare, a camp often waterlogged by rain.