MADRID—Asian consumers protested over soaring oil prices on Tuesday and in southern Europe two pickets supporting truck drivers' strikes died.
Spaniards fear a strike that has disrupted deliveries could cause shortages and they are stockpiling fuel and food. Traders at Madrid's main food wholesale market said supplies of fresh food would start to run out soon.
Portuguese drivers have joined the strike and there were also protests in France over the impact of record oil prices, now at highs of more than $139 per barrel.
One striking truck driver was killed near a Grenada market in southern Spain. In Portugal, a picket died as he tried to stop a truck on a road north of the capital Lisbon.
Diesel has risen to 1.30 euros/litre from 0.95 euros a year ago, pressuring European Union governments to help heavy fuel users such as truck and taxi drivers, fishermen and farmers.
In Asia, governments are struggling to prevent rising prices making the burden on the public so heavy that it threatens political stability.
South Korea's cabinet offered to resign in the face of huge street protests on Tuesday about the policies of its unpopular President Lee Myung-bak.
He said Asia's fourth-largest economy could be heading into crisis because of surging resource prices and slowing growth. Producer price inflation in the world's fifth-largest crude oil importer was near a 10-year high last month.
South Korean truck drivers voted on Monday to strike over rising fuel prices, ignoring a $10.2 billion government aid package designed to cushion the impact of the fuel cost surge.
"We are faced with a 'resources crisis' coming next only to the oil crisis in the 1970s and the financial crisis in the 1990s," the president said in a speech.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi pledged 1 billion ringgit ($306.6 million) in extra spending for the politically key state of Sarawak, to shore up support there among lawmakers unhappy over a jump in fuel costs.
A decision last week to raise petrol prices by 41 percent and diesel by 63 further soured the mood and the opposition is calling for protests later this week.
In Hong Kong about 500 minibuses, lorries, garbage trucks and coaches staged a go-slow protest, crippling traffic in a demonstration calling for fuel taxes to be scrapped.
Communists burned tyres and blocked roads in parts of eastern India in protests at fuel price rises but elsewhere in the country calls for strikes were largely ignored.
Increased Prices
India increased petrol and diesel prices last week by around 10 percent after the cost of fuel subsidies brought state oil companies close to bankruptcy.
In Spain, cars queued at petrol stations—40 percent of which had run out of fuel in the worst affected area of Catalonia—and supplies of fresh food began to run low in some markets, Spanish media reported.
"I heard all the petrol stations were running out of fuel so I came to fill up, otherwise I worried I won't be able to get to work tomorrow," said a Madrid driver who gave his name as Raul.
Police motorbike riders escorted fuel tankers to some petrol stations to break picket lines and prevent attacks, after some strikers slashed lorry tyres on Monday.
Oil company Cepsa said 45 percent of its deliveries had failed to get through to stations due to strikers blocking their path at fuel depots, although Spain's biggest oil firm Repsol said deliveries were getting through with "relative normality".
In Catalonia, car producer Seat said it stopped production on Monday night and a further two shifts on Tuesday—cutting production by 700 cars a shift—because supplies could not get through.
A strike by Spanish fishermen, now in its 12th day, showed no sign of breaking. Only a trickle of fish passed through Vigo—Europe's biggest fishing port—compared to the 200 tonnes that is normally traded there every day.
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