By Agencies

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Thousands of Greek civil servants have marched through Athens as they went on a 24-hour strike in protest again the government's plans to freeze wages.

The action on Wednesday left flights grounded and many schools and government offices closed, while public hospitals were expected to only take emergency cases.

Protests were said to be mostly peaceful apart from in one incident, where police fired tear gas at dozens of people who tried to break a cordon in the capital city.

The strike comes as the government moves to grapple with a debt crisis that has sent shock waves through the eurozone.

The socialist government has announced fresh measures to further cut the public salary bill and hike taxes, defying unions with plans to save the state 800 million euros ($1.1bn) this year.

Runaway deficit

Greece is suffering from a budget deficit that is four times the European Union limit.

"Today, the workers give their reply," protesters said over loudspeakers in the capital's central Syntagma Square, where hundreds of pensioners and striking workers began gathering for the demonstrations planned later in the morning.

"They had promised the rich would pay but instead they take the money from the poor," Ilias Iliopoulos, general secretary of the public sector umbrella union ADEDY, said.

"This is the policy we are fighting, not the effort to get out of the crisis."

Unions oppose plans to freeze public salaries, cut the salary supplements many Greeks get on top of their base pay, and replace only one in five people leaving the civil service.

The European Commission has voiced concern that Greece's fiscal crisis could affect other parts of the 16-nation eurozone and EU leaders were due to discuss the issue during a summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Various options

European governments have agreed in principle to support Greece and are considering various options, including bilateral aid, a senior German coalition source said on Tuesday.

Our correspondent said that if the EU decided not to help Greece, the other option would be the International Monetary Fund.

"The IMF has helped other eastern European countries like Latvia and Hungary over the last year but it hasn't had to step into the eurozone itself. If it did, that would be a significant humiliation for Greece and for Europe," he said.

A report in the Financial Times Deutschland on Wednesday suggested that Germany was preparing an aid plan for Greece.

The newspaper said Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, was working on both a bilateral basis and at the European level on putting together a package to help Athens.

German 'self-interest'

An unnamed government official quoted by the Financial Times said it was more self-interest than altruism that was driving Berlin.

"We are thinking about what we should do if the crisis spills from Greece into other euro countries," the official was quoted as saying.

"So it's more about finding firewalls, containing the problem, than principally about helping the Greeks."

Concerns over the Greek debt and other weak European economies made the euro reach its eight-month low against the US dollar last week.

It is believed that other eurozone nations may prefer to help Athens rather than have it go to International Monetary Fund, which could further shatter confidence in the euro.