An Iberia worker looks at a plane as he takes part in a march towards Madrid's Barajas airport February 18, 2013. Workers at loss-making Spanish flag carrier Iberia began a five-day strike at midnight on Monday, grounding over 1,000 flights and costing the airline and struggling national economy millions of euros.

MADRID | Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:46am EST

MADRID (Reuters) - Dozens of Iberia flights were canceled on Monday as workers at the loss-making Spanish flag carrier began a five-day strike over job cuts that is expected to cost the airline and struggling national economy millions of euros in lost business.

There was little sign of chaos on Monday morning in Barajas airport in Madrid, Iberia's hub, as the airline had already rescheduled most passengers on other flights or returned them their money.

Staff, including baggage handlers and air stewards, are holding the strikes in February and March to protest management plans to axe 3,807 jobs and cut salaries at the airline.

Workers kicked off the action with demonstrations at airports and plan a street protest in central Madrid on Wednesday evening.

Unionists began an 8 km-march (5 miles) around Barajas on Monday, telling reporters the airline was under threat, as was the future of the airport.

"Nobody is safe from being sacked," said Elias Gonzalez, a maintenance supervisor at the protest who has worked for Iberia for 27 years.

"There was an initial deal with the company when the merger with the British was agreed, but now there is disagreement."

In anticipation of the strike, Iberia had already canceled 415 flights between Monday and Friday, and as many as 1,200 flights operated by various airlines will be disrupted because of the lack of handling services at Spanish airports.

Domestic flights were the worst affected, with almost half grounded between Monday and Friday, Iberia said, while 10 percent of its lucrative, long-haul flights were canceled[ID:nL5N0BEAXS].

The February 18-22 strike, the first of three scheduled week-long stoppages, coincides with school holidays in Britain, Spain's biggest source of tourists.

Tourism accounts for around 11 percent of Spanish economic output and is one of the country's very few growth sectors in a prolonged recession that has pushed the unemployment rate above 26 percent.

Iberia, which merged with profitable British Airways in 2011 to form the International Airlines Group, reported a loss of 262 million euros ($349.78 million) in the first nine months of 2012.

SURVIVAL

The airline argues restructuring is vital to return the Spanish unit to profitability while unions say the IAG management is degrading pay and benefits in Spain through its low-cost airline Iberia Express.

Some 70,000 passengers will be affected during the Monday to Friday strike this week. About 86 percent have been given a different flights, including those operated by other airlines, while 14 percent had asked for refunds.

On Monday 37 flights due between 0800 and 1400 GMT (3 a.m. ET and 9 a.m. ET) were canceled at Madrid's Barajas airport, most of them Iberia flights but also three British Airways flights to London and a Luxair flight to Luxembourg.

Since the unions notified the strike two weeks ago and the transport ministry obliged them to offer a skeleton service under Spanish strike law, virtually no passengers were stranded at Spanish airports.

Iberia is just one of several companies in Spain, including Vodafone and bailed-out lender Bankia, to lay off workers.

It is fighting an uphill battle against low-cost operators, a depressed domestic economy and competitors that are in better shape after having already gone through restructuring processes.

Sabadell Bolsa analysts said the total 15 days of strikes could cost Iberia between 50 million euros and 100 million euros of losses. ($1 = 0.7490 euros)

(Additional reporting by Robert Hetz, writing by Clare Kane and Sarah Morris, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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BEIRUT | Sun Dec 23, 2012 3:34pm EST

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Dozens of people were killed and many more wounded in a Syrian government air strike that hit a bakery where a crowd was queuing for bread on Sunday, activists said.

If confirmed, the attack on Halfaya in central Syria, which was seized by rebels last week, would be one of the deadliest air strikes of Syria's civil war.

Videos uploaded by activists showed dozens of bloodstained corpses lying amid rubble and shrapnel. An adolescent boy with both his feet blown off lay flailing in the middle of a road.

"When I got there, I could see piles of bodies all over the ground. There were women and children," said Samer al-Hamawi, an activist in the town. "There are also dozens of wounded people."

Residents of Halfaya told Reuters they estimated 90 dead. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group with a network of activists across Syria, counted 60 killed.

"The number is likely to rise because there are dozens of wounded being treated in the area and nearby hospitals, among them 50 in critical condition," it said.

Activists say more than 44,000 people have been killed in the 21 months since protests erupted against President Bashar al-Assad, inspired by the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere.

Amid the latest carnage, United Nations-backed crisis mediator Lakhdar Brahimi arrived for more talks in Syria. He had to drive from neighboring Lebanon because fighting around Damascus International Airport has effectively shut it down.

"TIME IS GETTING SHORT"

The uprising has grown into civil war, with death tolls regularly topping 100 people a day as the army hits back at rebels who have made a string of advances across the country, including around the capital. According to the Observatory, more than 180 Syrians, civilians and fighters, died on Sunday.

A force of 200 rebel fighters seized the 135 Infantry Brigade base in the village of Hawa, a mostly Kurdish area in northern Aleppo province, rebels said on Sunday, as they showed journalists the base.

After overcoming about 150 soldiers in the raid on Saturday, they seized weapons including two field guns, three anti-aircraft guns and dozens of boxes of Kalashnikov assault rifles, they said.

In defiant remarks, Syrian Information Minister Umran Ahid al-Za'bi said rebels and their foreign allies should "forget" trying to topple Assad.

He appeared to move away from the conciliatory tone of the Syrian vice president, who said last week that neither side could win the war and called for a national unity government.

"These military efforts to try to topple the government, of getting rid of the president, of occupying the capital ... Forget about this," al-Za'bi told a news conference in Damascus.

"I have general advice to those political powers that reject dialogue: time is getting short. Hurry and move on to working on a political solution."

Brahimi, who replaced Kofi Annan after the former U.N. chief failed to get Assad and world powers to agree on a way to end the conflict, was expected to meet the president on Monday.

Western powers and some Arab countries have repeatedly demanded that Assad step down.

BREAD SHORTAGE

Witness Hamawi said more than 1,000 people had been queuing at the bakery in the town of Halfaya. Shortages of fuel and flour have made bread production erratic across the country, and people often wait hours to buy loaves.

"We hadn't received flour in around three days so everyone was going to the bakery today, and lots of them were women and children," Hamawi said. "I still don't know yet if my relatives are among the dead."

New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned army air strikes on bakeries earlier this year, arguing that in some incidents the Syrian military was not using enough precision to target rebel sites, and in other instances it may have intentionally hit civilians.

In video from the attack site, women and children cried and screamed as men rushed with motorbikes and vans to carry away victims.

There was no independent media access to the scene, as the government restricts press access in Syria.

In one video, the cameraman could be heard sobbing as he filmed. "God is great, God is great. It was a war plane, a war plane," he cried.

One man was seen stopping to pick up half a corpse lying in the street, wrapping it up in his own jacket and carrying it away. Residents were using their bare hands to dig for bodies underneath blocks of concrete.

"Where are the Arabs, where is the world?" shouted one man. "Look at all of these bodies!"

(Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Hawa.; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Stephen Powell and Jason Webb)

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