Giorgos Moutafis / Reuters

A Bangladeshi worker in the southwestern Greek town of Manolada is shown recovering in his tent Thursday, a day after three foremen at a strawberry farm allegedly opened fire on about 200 Bangladeshi immigrants who protested over unpaid wages.

ATHENS, Greece -- Greek police were searching Thursday for three foremen who were suspected of shooting and wounding more than 20 migrant workers at a strawberry farm.

The supervisors were believed to have opened fire on Wednesday at a crowd of about 200 mostly Bangladeshi immigrants who were demanding wages that had not been paid, police said. The wounded were taken to a hospital, but none of the injuries was believed to be serious.

Anti-foreigner sentiment has been rising in Greece, where one worker in four is unemployed after five years of recession.

Police said they had arrested the owner of the farm, in the southwestern town of Manolada, and were still hunting the foremen.

One of the immigrants involved in the protests told Greek Skai TV that they had been promised wages of $28.70 a day.

"They keep telling us that we will get paid in a month, and this has been going on for more than a year," said the worker, who was not identified. "We don't talk about it because we are afraid that we will be killed or kicked out."

Greece is a gateway for mostly Asian and African migrants trying to enter the European Union through its porous sea and land borders.

Most of those who find work in Greece are employed illegally; more than 40 percent of Greece's informal workers are migrants.

The Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, said after visiting Greece this year that he was seriously concerned about a rise in racist violence and urged authorities to get tougher.

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou on Thursday condemned what he called an "inhuman attack."

"This unprecedented and shameful act is foreign to Greek ethics," he said.

Related:

Thousands of Greeks rally in anti-austerity strike

Hate crimes increase as Greek economy sinks

General strike in Greece turns violent

BRUSSELS - Cyprus clinched a last-ditch deal with international lenders on Monday for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout that will shut down its second largest bank and inflict heavy losses on uninsured depositors, including wealthy Russians.

The agreement emerged after fraught negotiations between President Nicos Anastasiades and heads of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - hours before a deadline to avert a collapse of the banking system.

The plan, swiftly endorsed by euro zone finance ministers, will spare the east Mediterranean island a financial meltdown by winding down Popular Bank of Cyprus, also known as Laiki, and shifting deposits below 100,000 euros to the Bank of Cyprus to create a "good bank".

Deposits above 100,000 euros, which under EU law are not guaranteed, will be frozen and used to resolve debts, and Laiki will effectively be shuttered, with thousands of job losses.

An EU spokesman said no levy would be imposed on any deposits in Cypriot banks. A first attempt at a deal last week collapsed when the Cypriot parliament rejected a proposed levy on all deposits.

Related: Crisis in tiny Cyprus creates big mess for Europe

A senior source involved in the talks said Anastasiades had threatened to resign at one stage if he was pushed too far.

EU diplomats said the president, flown to Brussels in a private jet chartered by the European Commission, had fought to preserve the country's business model as an offshore financial centre drawing huge sums from wealthy Russians and Britons.

The key issues in dispute were how Cyprus would raise 5.8 billion euros from its banking sector towards its own financial rescue, and how to restructure and resolve the outsized banks.

The EU's economic affairs chief Olli Rehn said there were no good options but "only hard choices left" for the latest casualty of the euro zone crisis.

With banks closed for the last week, the Central Bank of Cyprus imposed a 100-euros per day limit on withdrawals from cash machines at the two biggest banks to avert a run.

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici rejected charges that the EU had brought Cypriots to their knees, saying it was the island's offshore business model that had failed.

"To all those who say that we are strangling an entire people ... Cyprus is a casino economy that was on the brink of bankruptcy," he told Canal Plus television.

The euro gained against the dollar on the news in early Asian trading.

Analysts had said failure to clinch a deal could cause a financial market selloff, but some said the island's small size - it accounts for just 0.2 percent of the euro zone's economic output - meant contagion would be limited.

The abandoned levy on bank deposits had unsettled investors since it represented an unprecedented step in Europe's handling of a debt crisis that has spread from Greece, to Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

Anxious mood
In the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, on Sunday the mood was anxious.

"I haven't felt so uncertain about the future since I was 13 and Cyprus was invaded," said Dora Giorgali, 53, a nursery teacher who lost her job two years ago when the school she worked at closed down.

"I have two children studying abroad and I tell them not to return to Cyprus. Imagine a mother saying that," she said in a central Nicosia square. "I think a solution will be found tonight but it won't be in the best interests of our country."

Virginia Mayo / AP

Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris, left, yawns as he listens during a media conference after an emergency eurogroup meeting in Brussels on Monday.

Cyprus's banking sector, with assets eight times the size of its economy, has been crippled by exposure to Greece, where private bondholders suffered a 75 percent "haircut" last year.

Without a deal by the end of Monday, the ECB said it would cut off emergency funds to the banks, spelling certain collapse and potentially pushing the country out of the euro.

Conservative leader Anastasiades, barely a month in office and wrestling with Cyprus' worst crisis since a 1974 invasion by Turkish forces split the island in two, was forced to back down on his efforts to shield big account holders.

Anticipating a run when banks reopen on Tuesday, parliament has given the government powers to impose capital controls.

Parliament
About 200 bank employees protested outside the presidential palace on Sunday chanting "troika out of Cyprus" and "Cyprus will not become a protectorate".

In a stunning vote on Tuesday, the 56-seat parliament rejected a levy on depositors, big and small. Finance Minister Michael Sarris then spent three fruitless days in Moscow trying to win help from Russia, whose citizens and companies have billions of euros at stake in Cypriot banks.

On Friday, lawmakers voted to nationalize pension funds and split failing lenders into good and bad banks - the measure likely to be applied to Laiki. The plan to tap pension funds was shelved due to German opposition, a Cypriot official said.

The revised bailout plan many not require further parliamentary approval since the idea of a levy was dropped.

The tottering banks hold 68 billion euros in deposits, including 38 billion in accounts of more than 100,000 euros - enormous sums for an island of 1.1 million people which could never sustain such a big financial system on its own.

This story was originally published on Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:59 PM EDT

Sunday Alamba / AP

People read local newspapers with the headline 'We've killed 7 foreign hostages' on a street in Kano, Nigeria, on March 10.

ROME/ATHENS — Seven foreign hostages kidnapped last month by a Nigerian Islamist group from a construction firm's compound have been killed, the Italian and Greek Foreign Ministries said on Sunday.

Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansaru said on Saturday it had killed the hostages seized on February 7 in the northern state of Bauchi because of attempts by Nigerian and British forces to free them.

It published grainy photos purporting to show the bodies of a Briton, an Italian, a Greek and four Lebanese workers snatched from the Lebanese firm Setraco.

Foreign governments had not been able to confirm the killings until Sunday. Italy and Greece denied any attempt to rescue them had been made by any of the governments involved. Nigeria had no confirmation of the killings.

"Our checks conducted in co-ordination with the other countries concerned lead us to believe that the news of the killing of the hostages seized last month is true," an Italian Foreign Ministry statement said.

"There was never any military attempt to rescue the hostages by any of the governments concerned," it said, adding the president had sent his condolences to the Italian's family.

Security has become a top concern for oil and infrastructure companies across the region after gunmen loyal to al Qaeda's north African franchise stormed an Algerian gas plant in January. Up to 37 foreigners died during an attempted rescue mission by Algerian forces.

The risk posed by Islamists across west and north Africa has greatly increased since France sent troops to Mail to wrest control of its northern territory from al Qaeda linked rebels.

Islamist groups have also spread across the north and centre of Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, where they have become the main security threat after an amnesty ended an uprising by armed groups in the oil-producing southeastern Niger Delta.

Britain said it was "likely" the Briton was killed along with the six others, with Foreign Secretary William Hague saying: "This was an act of cold-blooded murder, which I condemn in the strongest terms."

Greece confirmed its citizen was dead, adding the Foreign Ministry had informed his family. Lebanon declined to comment.

Nigerian authorities continued to say they had no evidence, after doubting the veracity of the Ansaru statement on Saturday.

"We have launched a full investigation to find out what has really happened, but for now we really cannot way whether this report is true or not," police spokesman for Bauchi state Hassan Mohammed Auyo said by telephone.

SECURITY THREAT

Western security officials say growing links between Nigerian Islamists and Saharan groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has led them to increasingly seek Western targets, rather than local security forces or civilians.

French intervention in Mali has also heightened the risk to Western interests in Nigeria, analysts say, and French oil major Total moved its staff from the Nigerian capital Abuja, where the main insurgent group Boko Haram operates, in January.

Kidnappings - including some targeting foreigners - have been rife in the southeast for many years, but the gangs there usually seek a payout and hostages tend to be released quickly, while Islamist kidnappings in the north are often fatal.

The hostage-taking at the compound in the remote town of Jama'are was the largest number of foreigners seized in the mostly Muslim north since an Islamist insurgency intensified two years ago.

Ansaru declared itself a separate group from Boko Haram in January, although security officials believe them to be closely linked.

Its full name is Jama'atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan or "vanguards for the protection of Muslims in Black Africa".

Ansaru was suspected of being behind the killing of a British and Italian hostage a year ago in northwest Nigeria during a botched attempt to rescue them by British and Nigerian forces. Britain has labeled it a terrorist organization.

It also claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in December of a French national, still missing.

Nigerian authorities are still looking for a French family of seven kidnapped in northern Cameroon and moved over the border by militants who said they were from Boko Haram.

Additional reporting by Inusa Jaba in Bauchi and Tim Cocks in Lagos

John Kolesidis / Reuters

A woman is rescued from floodwaters by a man standing on top of her car during heavy rain in the Chalandri suburb, north of Athens, Greece, on Feb. 22, 2013.

John Kolesidis / Reuters

The woman had become stuck as water engulfed her car.

John Kolesidis / Reuters

The woman is carried to safety after being rescued.

Pantelis Saitas / EPA

An employee of the Greek Parliament hangs precariously after falling through the glass roof of the Greek Parliament Hall while trying to prevent rain water leaking into the building, in Athens on Feb. 22, 2013.

Simela Pantzartzi / EPA

People stand on a bench at a bus station during a heavy storm in Athens on Feb. 22, 2013.

A heavy rainstorm in the Athens region on Friday morning flooded streets in the Greek capital and interrupted transport on land and sea. In the suburb of Chalandri, a woman had to be rescued from her car as raging torrents of water engulfed the vehicle.

A worker at the Greek parliament had to be rescued after she crashed through the glass roof of the building while trying to stop a leak. The woman found herself hanging through a broken panel in the roof and was slightly injured, according to local reports cited by Xinhua.

-- The European Pressphoto Agency and Reuters contributed to this report

Giorgos Moutafis / Reuters

Protesters march during a 24-hour strike in Athens, Feb. 20, 2013. Tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens on Wednesday during a nationwide strike against wage cuts and high taxes that kept ferries stuck in ports, schools shut and hospitals with only emergency staff.

Tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens on Wednesday as part of a nationwide strike against austerity that confined ferries to ports, shut schools and left hospitals with only emergency staff.

Beating drums, blowing whistles and chanting, "Robbers, robbers!" more than 60,000 people angry at wage cuts and tax rises marched to parliament in the biggest protest for months over austerity policies required by international lenders.

In the capital, riot police fired tear gas at hooded youths hurling rocks and bottles during a demonstration, mostly of students and pensioners, which ended peacefully.

The two biggest labor unions brought much of crisis-hit Greece to a standstill with a 24-hour protest strike against policies they say deepen the hardship of people struggling through the country's worst peacetime downturn.

Representing 2.5 million workers, the unions have gone on strike repeatedly since a debt crisis erupted in late 2009, testing the government's will to impose the painful conditions of an international bailout in the face of growing public anger.

"Today's strike is a new effort to get rid of the bailout deal and those who take advantage of the people and bring only misery," said Ilias Iliopoulos, secretary general of the ADEDY public sector union, which organized the walkout along with private sector union GSEE.

"A social explosion is very near," he told Reuters from a rally in a central Athens square as police helicopters clattered overhead.

The eight-month-old coalition of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been eager to show it will implement reforms promised to the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which have bailed Athens out twice with over 200 billion euros.

The government has cracked down on striking workers, invoking emergency laws twice this year to get seamen and subway workers back to work after week-long walkouts that paralyzed public transport in Athens and led to food shortages on islands.

Demonstrations were also held in Greece's second-biggest city, Thessaloniki, and on the island of Crete where dozens of protesters hit the streets waving black flags.

In Athens, crowds began to disperse from Syntagma Square outside parliament, but minor clashes between riot police and hooded youths moved to sidestreets.

Labor unrest has picked up in recent weeks. A visit by French President Francois Hollande in Athens on Tuesday went largely unreported because Greek journalists were on strike.

"The period of virtual euphoria is over," said opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, whose Syriza party has regained a narrow opinion poll lead over the governing conservatives.

"Those who thought Samaras would renegotiate the terms of the bailout ... are now faced with the harsh reality of unpaid bills, closed shops and lost jobs," he said.

Under pressure
Anger at politicians and the wealthy elite has been boiling during the crisis, with many accusing the government of making deep cuts to wages and pensions while doing too little to spread the burden or go after rich tax evaders.

"This government needs to look out for us poor people as well because we can't take it any more," said Niki Lambopoulou, a 43-year-old insurance broker and single mother.

"I work night and day to make ends meet and the government is killing our children's dreams."

In a sign it may be buckling under pressure, the government announced on Monday it would not fire almost 1,900 civil servants earmarked for possible dismissal, despite promising foreign lenders it would seek to cut the public payroll.

"The strike highlights the growing gap between the plight of ordinary Greeks and the demands of Greece's international creditors," said Martin Koehring, analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, forecasting more social unrest this year.

Greece secured bailout funds in December, ending months of uncertainty over the country's future in the euro zone, and analysts said this had created expectations among Greeks that things would improve for them personally.

"If these expectations are not satisfied by the summer, then whatever is left of the working class will respond with more protests," said Costas Panagopoulos, head of Alco pollsters.

Six years of recession and three of austerity have tripled the rate of unemployment to 27 percent. More than 60 percent of young workers are jobless.

Most business and public sector activity came to a halt with schoolteachers, train drivers and doctors among those joining the strike. Banks pulled down their shutters and ships stayed docked as seamen defied government orders to return to work.

"I'm on the brink of going hungry. My life is misery," said Eleni Nikolaou, 60, a civil servant who supports her unemployed brother on her reduced wage. "If this government had any dignity it would resign. I want them to leave, leave, leave."

Armend Nimani / AFP - Getty Images

Kosovo Albanian youth march under Albanian flags during celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Albania's independence in Pristina, Kosovo, Nov. 28, 2012.

Arben Celi / Reuters

Albania's special army forces march during a parade to celebrate the country's 100th anniversary of independence in Tirana, Nov. 28.

Reuters reports — The foreign minister of neighboring Greece boycotted festivities on Wednesday marking 100 years of Albania's independence after its prime minister hailed a town over the border as "Albanian lands".

Ethnic Albanians from across the region meanwhile celebrated in the national colors of red and black with a 14 ton cake and bushy mustaches to honor the founding fathers.

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha's remarks were in a text he sent to a museum on Tuesday evening to mark the 100th anniversary of Albanian independence from Ottoman rule and honor the founder of modern Albania, Ismail Qemali. Full story…

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Gent Shkullaku / AFP - Getty Images

A chef cuts cake measuring 5920 square feet on the main boulevard of Tirana, Albania, Nov. 28.

Arben Celi / Reuters

Children eat cake measuring 5920 square feet prepared for the 100th anniversary of Albania's independence in Tirana, Albania, Nov. 28.

Visar Kryeziu / AP

Kosovo Albanians buys balloons in the main square decorated with Albanian flags in Pristina, Kosovo, Nov. 28.

Nikolas Giakoumidis/AP

A protester, not seen, throws a coffee at German consul Wolfgang Hoelscher-Obermaier, with the blue shirt, in Thessaloniki Thursday.

ATHENS - Public sector workers stormed a building where Greek and German officials were meeting in the northern city of Thessaloniki Thursday and pelted a German diplomat with water bottles in a protest over austerity measures.

Riot police used teargas and truncheons to break up a crowd of 250 city employees outside the building and formed a shield around German Consul Wolfgang Hoelscher-Obermaier as he entered.

Photographs also showed coffee being thrown over Hoelscher-Obermaier.

Protesters chanted "It's now or never!" and held up mock gravestones and banners proclaiming "Fight until the end!"

They said they were furious at comments by German envoy Hans-Joachim Fuchtel, who told journalists on Wednesday that Greece could do more to reform its bloated local government sector, the head of the workers' union said.

"Experts say that as far as local government is concerned the work carried out by 3,000 Greek employees can be done by 1,000 Germans," Fuchtel said. On Thursday, he said his remarks had been misinterpreted.

Violence breaks out amid austerity protests in Europe

Fuchtel was appointed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year to explore ways to boost grassroots cooperation between the two countries, and has been lampooned as overbearing in Greek media.

His comments struck a nerve in Greece at a time when its lenders, the European Union and International Monetary Fund, have demanded layoffs and steep spending cuts in exchange for a second $165 billion bailout.

More photos: Demonstrations across Europe over austerity measures

At the Thessaloniki city hall, a woman who answered the switchboard phone said: "No one can talk to you now. They have occupied the building."

A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said: "No one was hurt and there was no material damage. The meeting continues as planned and that's what's important."

Garbage piles
Municipal employees have held several nationwide protests and strikes in recent weeks against the new wave of budget cuts, triggering severe disruptions in public transport and causing garbage to pile up across the capital.

The head of the POE-OTA union of municipal workers, Themis Balasopoulos, said Fuchtel's comments showed the government planned to push ahead with controversial public sector layoffs, about 2,000 of which are scheduled by the end of the year.

Read more coverage from NBC News about Europe's austerity troubles

Unions and some politicians oppose the layoffs, which are mainly expected to target local government workers.

"We are here to express our deep anger at his absurd comments," Balasopoulos told Reuters from the protest in Thessaloniki.

"We are not a democracy -- we are under German supervision. If we had decent politicians they would have put him on a plane last night and sent him back home," he said.

Many Greeks, worn down by years of austerity, blame Merkel for forcing the painful cuts in exchange for the bailouts.

In Germany, media have long characterized the Mediterranean state's 11 million people as lazy, corrupt and ungrateful.

Tens of thousands of Greeks protested against a visit by Merkel to Athens in October and some burned Nazi flags. 

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Updated at 9:05 a.m. ET: Pockets of violence broke out as public demonstrations and strikes over rising unemployment and austerity measures took place in many parts of Europe Wednesday.

Spanish and Portuguese workers staged a coordinated general strike across the Iberian Peninsula, shutting transport, grounding flights and closing schools to protest against spending cuts and tax hikes.

International rail services were disrupted by strikes in Belgium and workers in Greece, Italy and France planned work stoppages or demonstrations as part of a "European Day of Action and Solidarity.”

Hundreds of flights -- including those between southern Europe and connection hubs such as London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Schiphol -- were also canceled.

More than 60 people were arrested in Spain and 34 injured, 18 of them security officials after scuffles at picket lines and damage to storefronts, Reuters reported. Riot police arrested at least two protesters in Madrid and hit others with batons, witnesses said.

Protesters jammed cash machines with glue and coins and plastered anti-government stickers on shop windows. Power consumption dropped 16 percent with factories idled.

More photos: Demonstrations across Europe over austerity measures

In Italy, students pelted police with rocks in a protest in Rome over money-saving plans for the school system. The windows of a bank in Milan were reportedly smashed by protesting students, according to a report on the website of the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper.

In Greece, state workers, holding banners reading "Enough is Enough," started rallying on several squares in central Athens on Wednesday morning.

See more coverage of this story at ITV News

Yves Herman / Reuters

A passenger waits on an empty platform at the Thalys high-speed train terminal at Brussels Midi/Zuid rail station amid strikes across Europe Wednesday.

The international coordination shows "we are looking at a historic moment in the European Union movement," said Fernando Toxo, head of Spain's biggest union, Comisiones Obreras.

Spain, where one in four workers is unemployed, is now teetering on the brink of calling for a bailout from the European Union, with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy trying to put off a rescue that could require even more EU-mandated budget cuts.

Passion has been further inflamed since last week when a Spanish woman jumped from her apartment to her death as bailiffs tried to evict her when her bank foreclosed on a loan. Spaniards are furious at banks being rescued with public cash while ordinary people suffer.

"We're going to protest because they're ignoring people's rights. People are being evicted and they're raising our taxes," said Sandra Gonzalez, 19, a social work student at Madrid's Complutense University who plans to march with friends.

ITV News reporter James Mates posted a picture on Twitter of a deserted station in central Madrid.

In Portugal, which accepted an EU bailout last year, the streets have been quieter so far, but public and political opposition to austerity is mounting, threatening to derail new measures sought by Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho. His policies were held up this week as a model by Germany's Angela Merkel, a hate figure in crisis-hit southern European countries.

A strike organized by CGTP in March had little impact, but in September hundreds of thousands of Portuguese rallied against a government plan to raise workers' social security contributions.

"The first-ever Iberian strike" would be "a great signal of discontent and also a warning to European authorities," said Armenio Carlos, head of Portugal's CGTP union which is organizing the action there.

Unions have planned rallies and marches in cities throughout both countries, with a major demonstration beginning at 6:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. ET) in Madrid.

Some 5 million people, or 22 percent of the workforce, are union members in Spain. In Portugal about one fourth of the 5.5 million-strong workforce is unionized.

"This austerity is a never-ending story. We see no light at the end of the end of the tunnel, just more pain and difficulties. We have to protest, do something to stop it," said Lisbon pensioner Jose Marques, who planned to march Wednesday.

AFP - Getty Images

Demonstrators march in Rome, Italy, as protests and strikes over austerity measures were held by people across Europe Wednesday.

ITV News is the U.K. partner of NBC News. Reuters contributed to this report.

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