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Maintenance workers of Algeria's national airline company Air Algérie launched a surprise strike action at 5am on Tuesday 16 May, demanding higher salaries.

According to reports, maintenance workers are demanding the administration to open emergency negotiations to raise wages and monthly grants. The pilots and hosts benefited from similar increases after they launched a successful one-day strike in November 2016.

All flights leaving Algeria were cancelled, whereas the action did not impact incoming flights.

At 9:45am, nine international and 13 national flights were suspended, and hundreds of passengers were stranded in Houari Boumediene airport in Algiers, the capital.

	Hundreds are stranded in Alger [Photo via Twitter]

About eight hours into the strike, and after hours of negotiations, Air Algérie announced the strike was suspended.

Some workers broke the picket line to allow some flights to take off.

However the national union of aviation maintenance workers (S.N.T.M.A.) declared to that the strike will continue. 

Ahmed Botomi, head of the union, said that during negotiations Taher Alash, the acting general manager of Air Algérie, promised that the union's demands will be fulfilled in 2018 and asked workers to be patient.

This caused the negotiations to break down, and Botomi affirmed that the strike will continue until workers' demands will be met.