Category World News

Widespread disruption has hit Portuguese air travel and trains, hospitals and schools after trade unions called the biggest nationwide strike action in more than a decade against government labour reforms.

Heavy disruption on Thursday has been felt across public sectors as workers protest against a draft law aiming to simplify firing procedures, extend the length of fixed-term contracts and expand the minimum services required during industrial disputes.

Some public transport operated due to minimum service requirements imposed by authorities, but the capital, Lisbon’s, streets were noticeably quieter.

Lisbon’s main train station was empty with most services cancelled and the TAP Air Portugal national airline called off about two-thirds of its usual 250 flights.

While hospitals stayed open, most surgeries and appointments have been postponed as nursing staff walked out.

Thursday’s walkout is Portugal’s largest since June 2013, when the country was forced to gut public spending in exchange for international aid after being engulfed by a debt crisis that affected several European nations.

Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has insisted that the labour reforms, with more than 100 measures, were intended to “stimulate economic growth and pay better salaries”.

But the communist-leaning General Confederation of the Portuguese Worker (CGTP) and more moderate General Union of Workers (UGT) have lambasted the plans.

The CGTP organised about 20 demonstrations across the country. Its secretary-general, Tiago Oliveira, called the reforms “among the biggest attacks on the world of work”.

He told the AFP news agency that the government action would “normalise job insecurity”, “deregulate working hours” and “make dismissals easier”.

Of a working population of some five million people, about 1.3 million are already in insecure positions, Oliveira said.

‘Already a success’

With Portugal set to elect a new president in early 2026, Oliveira said he considered the strike was “already a success” as it had drawn public attention to the government’s labour reforms.

“Without a doubt, we’ll have a great general strike,” the union leader added.

Public opinion is largely behind the action, with 61 percent of those polled in favour of the walkout, according to a survey published in the Portuguese press.

On the eve of the strike, Montenegro said he hoped “that the country will function as normally as possible … because the rights of some must not infringe on the rights of others”.

Although his party lacks a majority in parliament, Montenegro’s government should be able to force the bill through with the support of the liberals, and the far right, which has become the second-largest political force in Portugal.

The left-wing opposition has accused Montenegro’s camp of not telling voters that workers’ rights rollbacks were on the cards while campaigning for the last parliamentary elections.

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Despite pressure from the United States, it has continued buying cheap Russian oil and has recently strengthened economic ties with Russia — from trade to weapons and critical minerals.

But this is a delicate balancing act for Prime Minister Narendra Modi: he wants to cut deals with Moscow, while staying friends with Washington, his biggest trading partner.

For President Vladimir Putin, it shows Russia still has powerful partners and is not completely isolated despite Western sanctions.

And Syria’s economy one year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

At least 30 people, including patients, have been killed, and about 70 wounded after an air strike by the country’s military government hit a major hospital in western Myanmar, according to a rebel group, aid workers and a witness.

Myanmar has been gripped by attritional fighting in a raging civil war.

The hospital in western Rakhine state’s Mrauk U township was struck late on Wednesday by bombs dropped by a military aircraft, said Khine Thu Kha, a spokesman for the Arakan Army, which is battling the ruling government along parts of the coastal state.

“The Mrauk U General Hospital was completely destroyed,” Khine Thu Kha told the Reuters news agency.

“The high number of casualties occurred because the hospital took a direct hit.”

Myanmar has been gripped by conflict since the military suppressed protests against a 2021 coup that unseated the elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The 300-bed hospital was overflowing with patients at the time of the strike, said aid worker Wai Hun Aung, as most healthcare services across swaths of Rakhine state have been suspended amid the ongoing fighting.

‘The situation is very terrible’

On Thursday morning, the facility lay in complete ruins, with a collapsed roof, shattered columns and beams, and the bodies of victims laid out on the ground, according to images shared by Wai Hun Aung that he also posted on social media – which could not be independently verified.

“The situation is very terrible,” he told the AFP news agency. “As for now, we can confirm there are 31 deaths and we think there will be more deaths. Also, there are 68 wounded and will be more and more.”

Soon after he heard the sound of explosions on Wednesday night, a 23-year-old resident of Mrauk U said he rushed to the site.

“When I arrived, the hospital was on fire,” he said, asking not to be named because of security concerns. “I saw many bodies lying around and many injured people.”

Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng, reporting from central Myanmar, said that such attacks are almost daily occurrences in Myanmar.

“We heard overnight a loud explosion a couple of villages over. What we understand is that a military jet dropped a 1,000-pound bomb,” he said, referring to the area he is in in central Myanmar.

“That attack led to one fatality and several injuries,” he said.

Cheng added that almost every household has a bomb shelter these days – used by people as soon as they see aircraft or hear them.

Government ramps up air attacks

The military government, which has the only air force in Myanmar, has been increasingly using air attacks to hit targets inside rebel-held areas.

From January to late November this year, the government conducted 2,165 air strikes, compared with 1,716 such incidents during the whole of 2024, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

Resistance groups formed in the wake of the coup have combined with major ethnic armies like the Arakan Army to take on the military, which is fighting the rebellion on multiple front lines.

Since the breakdown of a ceasefire in 2023, the Arakan Army has pushed the military out of 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships, gaining control of an area larger than Belgium, according to an analysis published by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.