German manufacturing giant Siemens has announced plans to slash 6,500 jobs.

The latest job losses will come in addition to Siemens' already announced 10,000 job cuts.

The announcement came along with news that Siemens' net profits more than doubled during the January to March period to 1.281bn euros (�788.7m; $1.143bn).

That was up from 538m euros during the last three months of 2001 and from 578m euros a year ago.

The sharp rise in profits was due to a one-off windfall of 561 euros from the sale of shares in the chip maker Infineon.

Redundancies

Siemens has set aside 300m euros to pay for the redundancies which will come in its fixed-line telephone unit.

The cut-backs will take place "over the next several quarters", Siemens said.

The fixed-line telecoms division has been a consistent loss maker for Siemens in recent months.

But its mainstream engineering plants are profitable, and its mobile phone division edged into the black late last year.

"A majority of our operating units improved their earnings compared with the same period a year ago, but we are well aware of the challenges still ahead," said chairman Heinrich von Pierer.

Earlier this month, Siemens' mobile phone division accepted help from a rival in a bid to speed the arrival of its next generation handsets, which allow users to surf the web, play video games and transmit data at high speeds.

When the first Siemens third-generation (3G) handsets go on sale later this year, they will carry the Siemens logo even though they will be made by Motorola, the world's number two manufacturer.