Fuel Protests Result In Two Deaths in Europe

BARCELONA - June 11, 2008: AFP has reported that two striking lorry drivers (that's 'truck drivers' in U.S. lingo) were killed on picket lines in Spain and Portugal on Tuesday as strikes by thousands of truckers over soaring fuel prices turned deadly.

The AFP report states that Spanish police had to escort gasoline supply tankers into Barcelona on the second day of the stoppage that has also caused food and fuel shortages and huge traffic jams on the Spanish-French border. To make European transportation matters worse, French railway workers began their own walkout, adding to the chaos.

The Portuguese death occurred driver when a picketer was hit by a truck as he manned a traffic barricade in a town north of Lisbon. Witnesses were quoted as saying that the 52-year-old man climbed onto the side of a truck in an effort to stop it. He fell off and landed under the wheels of the moving vehicle.

Later on Tuesday, a Spanish truck driver was run over and killed by a van in a similar accident outside a wholesale market in the city of Granada.

During the national strikes in Spain and Portugal other trucks have been hit by rocks thrown by protesters or been had their tires slashed.