RAMALLAH: Dozens of Palestinian truck drivers have blocked the main streets of the West Bank city of Ramallah to protest rising prices.

Nearby, about two dozen quarry workers also held a demonstration. The Sunday protests were the latest in a series of small but snowballing strikes against the Western-backed Palestinian Authority over rising prices and delayed payment of salaries to more than 150,000 civil servants.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs Palestinians in the West Bank, is suffering a budgetary shortfall because the U.S. and Arab countries that sustain it haven't paid all the aid money that they have promised.

Palestinian officials have done little to calm the protests, apparently hoping to show foreign donors the potential consequences of their fragile economy falling apart.