PARIS -- A Portuguese truck driver was killed while manning a strikers' road block on Tuesday as a global backlash over high fuel prices escalated on Tuesday.

Europe remained the epicenter of a movement begun by fishermen, with lorry drivers' pickets at the Spain-France border causing massive disruption to fuel, food and even parts deliveries for industrial output.

However, the global and fluctuating pattern of workers' action was underlined as a second day of protests by government workers in India left around 20 people injured -- police again using batons and water cannon to quell popular anger, with dozens detained.

There were conflicting accounts as to what had happened in Alcanena, north of Lisbon.

Manual Agostinho, a fellow striker who was running the road block, told Portugal's Lusa news agency that the 52-year-old man had been run over by a heavy goods lorry as he signaled for it to stop.

"It went over him. It's murder," Agostinho told Lusa. The lorry had been traveling at about 50 kilometers an hour (30 miles an hour), he added.

Police officers at the scene -- about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Portuguese capital -- immediately arrested the driver of the lorry, he said.

But Lieutenant Colonel Costa Lima, of the Republican National Guard, told TSF radio that the striker had been hanging onto the vehicle, which had failed to stop, and had fallen under its wheels.

Most lorry drivers in Portugal joined an indefinite strike on Monday to protest the soaring price of diesel. On Tuesday however, some drivers in the center of the country had returned to work with the Lisbon government predicting a deal later this week.

Tens of thousands of truckers across Spain, France and Portugal are on strike or joining protests to demand government help to offset higher fuel costs.

While new talks with trucker representatives were held in Madrid, and Mediterranean governments seek solutions at a European Union level, the protests began to bite on an everyday level.

Police escorted 20 petrol tankers into Barcelona, a Spanish regional police spokesman told AFP.

Already, 40 percent of petrol stations in Catalonia had run out of fuel, according to Manuel Amado, president of the Catalonia Federation of Service Stations.

Arrivals of fresh meat, fish and fruit in Madrid have also come to a near halt, according to officials at the Mercamadrid market, Spain's biggest wholesale market.

Fish would be in short supply from Thursday but stocks of other foods would last until the end of the week, they added.

Factories, including the Seat automobile plant at Martorell in northeast Spain, were further hit because they rely on daily deliveries of parts.

Spanish and French truckers staged pickets on either side of their frontier, blocking a bridge on the border at Bidassoa in the western Basque region and other main crossing points.

On the French side, service areas on motorways were packed with trucks from the border right back to the wine capital of Bordeaux, about 200 km (125 miles) away.

A separate strike by workers at the French rail company, SNCF, also hit rail traffic.

While Spanish fisherman were keeping up their strike, many French trawlers had decided to go back to work after several weeks of blocking ports and access to oil refineries.

About 20 people were hurt as police in Indian Kashmir resorted to batons and water cannon to ward off hundreds of government employees trying to march on the office of Kashmir's chief minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad.

"Some 20 people received minor injuries. They were sent home after getting medical treatment," police officer Pervez Ahmed said, adding that a "few dozen others" were detained.

India imports 70 percent of the oil needed for its fast-growing economy.

Amid surging crude costs, the government one week ago announced hikes of 11 percent and 9.4 percent in petrol and diesel prices respectively, based on prices in the capital.