Tegucigalpa: Soldiers have occupied state hospitals in an increasingly tense Honduras as health workers declared an indefinite strike calling for the return of ousted president Manuel Zelaya.
As the political stalemate dragged on more than one month after the military coup, foreign diplomats meanwhile met with the defiant interim leaders in a bid to seek a negotiated end to the crisis.
A day after police fired tear gas and water cannons at some 3,000 student Zelaya supporters, hospital workers said they were on an indefinite strike.
"All the hospitals are militarised but the stoppage will continue," said Elvin Canales, a union leader at a hospital in the east of the capital Tegucigalpa.
Around 8,000 health workers went on strike this week, in a move affecting 28 hospitals and more than 1,000 health centres across the impoverished Central American nation.
Most of the country`s 50,000 teachers have maintained strikes since the June 28 ouster of Zelaya, which followed a dispute with courts, Congress and the military over his plans to change the Constitution.
Demonstrations both for and against Zelaya continued in the capital and in the northern economic hub of San Pedro Sula yesterday.
Bureau Report
