Demonstrations and calls for general strikes hit key U.S. ally Jordan after the country’s prime minister added to the country’s economic problems by announcing price hikes for gas and other fuel.

Abdullah Ensour's announcement on state television Tuesday cited a need to offset $5 billion in state losses by increasing fuel costs.

It sparked protests in the capital, Amman, and at least 12 other cities across Jordan.

The protesters, spanning an array of different political groups, also targeted King Abdullah II -- a rare public display against the monarch.

Criticizing the king in public is forbidden in Jordan and is punishable by up to three years in jail.

"Revolution, revolution, it is a popular revolution," chanted about 2,000 in an impromptu demonstration at a main Amman square, housing the Interior Ministry and other vital government departments.

"Freedom is from God, in spite of you, Abdullah," they shouted.

Tough test for regime
Cars jammed gas stations to stock up on fuel before the price hike takes effect on Wednesday.

The protests looked set to escalate toward the end of the week, setting a tough test for Jordan’s regime, although military suppression tactics - commonly used in Egypt and elsewhere – are highly unusual.

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The country has traditionally been one of the most stable in the Middle East, despite its position at the fulcrum of the region’s deepest conflicts in recent years. Its longest border, with Israel, has been peaceful since a 1993 treaty.

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Although a relatively wealthy country, Jordan lacks natural resources and has been stretched economically by decades of refugees from neighboring conflicts, who have pushed up demand for real estate and commodities.

Ensour, the prime minister, said a type of fuel used in public transport will rise in price by 14 percent, while kerosene oil used for household heating will go up by 28 percent.

Cooking gas will jump 54 percent, he said. Many low-income Jordanians use the gas for heating.

Pipeline repeatedly blown up
Disruptions in cheap Egyptian gas shipments cost Jordan an extra $7 million a day, the government said, pushing the budget deficit to a record high of nearly $3 billion this year.

The pipeline that carries Egyptian natural gas to Israel and Jordan has been blown up more than a dozen times over the past year by militants in Egypt's Sinai desert, halting shipments. Jordan has switched to the more expensive fuel oil to generate electricity.

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In some cities in Jordan's south, inhabited by tribal Bedouins who are traditional supporters of the king, hundreds of protesters took to the streets to chant slogans calling for the ouster of the prime minister, but also criticizing the king.

In Mazar, dozens of protesters burned down the main court building after stealing documents, said Yazan Naanah, a resident who said he saw the arson but did not take part in the protest.

Further south in Maan, a hotbed for Jordanian Muslim militants, 500 protesters blocked the streets, burning tires and throwing stones at riot police, who were firing tear gas, a city official said, insisting on anonymity because he is not allowed to make press statements. He said there were no immediate reports of injuries.

NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin and Reuters contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON -- Investigators are probing reports of record-shredding by officials in the U.S.-led NATO command that trains the Afghan army after learning that records of fuel purchases for the Afghans totaling nearly $475 million are gone.

The training command has also not been tracking whether the fuel it delivers to the Afghan army is actually used or stored, leaving officials unable to determine whether any of it was stolen, said an interim report by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.

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John Sopko, appointed recently by President Barack Obama to the special inspector general's job, told Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in a letter on Monday that SIGAR was investigating the reported shredding by officials of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, or CSTC-A.

Investigating waste, fraud and abuse
Sopko's office conducts criminal as well as civil investigations of waste, fraud and abuse relating to U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. SIGAR was created in 2008.

During an audit of spending on fuel for the Afghan army, the CSTC-A command "informed us that its officials shredded all ANA (Afghan National Army) POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants) financial records related to payments totaling nearly $475 million from October 2006 to February 2011," Sopko wrote in a letter obtained by Reuters.

In addition, the training command could not provide over half the documents the inspector general's office requested for its audit covering March 2011 to March 2012, Sopko told Panetta.

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"The destruction of records and the unexplained failure to provide other records violate DOD (Department of Defense) and Department of the Army policies," Sopko said. He said a 2010 memo from the U.S. Army Central Command specifically instructed financial managers not to destroy documents related to the war.

"This matter has been referred to SIGAR investigations, and we would appreciate the continued cooperation of CSTC-A in our official investigation of the destruction of these records," Sopko said.

In a written response to Sopko's office, the training command noted steps it had taken to verify fuel purchases and deliveries, but did not comment on the reported document shredding.

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Sopko's office has done an interim report and plans to issue a fuller report on the fuel spending later this year.

Developing controls
The CSTC-A is a multinational command that works with the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan to train and equip the Afghan security forces. The commanding general is U.S. Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, who was copied in on Sopko's letter to Panetta.

The training command pays for fuel needed to power the Afghan army's vehicles, generators and power plants. But it is preparing to hand over responsibility for logistics, including fuel, to the Afghan army on Jan. 1.

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Foreign forces are due to hand off security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

The United States, with help from international donors, will continue to pay for the Afghan army's fuel, however, and CSTC-A has proposed to increase spending on the Afghan army's fuel to $555 million a year starting in fiscal 2014, SIGAR said in its interim report. In the current fiscal year, about $480 million was spent, the report said.

Before handing over logistics responsibility to the Afghans and before committing to spend more money on fuel, the training command must develop better controls, the report said.

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The government of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is emerging as a rare supplier of diesel to Syria, potentially undermining Western sanctions and helping the Syrian government fuel its military in the middle of a bloody crackdown on civilian protests.

A cargo of diesel, which can be used to fuel army tanks or as heating fuel, was expected to arrive at Syria's Mediterranean port of Banias this week, according to two traders and shipping data reported by Reuters. The cargo could be worth up to $50 million.

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Chavez is a vociferous advocate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who face pressure from Western sanctions. Few leaders on the world stage have polarised opinion as sharply as the Venezuelan president.

Chavez, who still defends the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has repeatedly backed Arab leaders who have faced a year-long wave of popular protests, which have already toppled four governments.

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Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA shipped the cargo aboard the Negra Hipolita vessel, according to AIS tracking data on the Reuters Freight Fundamentals Database and to trade sources. The same tanker carried the first such shipment in November, the sources said.

PDVSA could not immediately be reached for comment.

"The aggressions against Syria are continuing," Chavez said in an address last month. "It's the same formula they (the West) used against Libya - inject violence, inject terrorism from abroad and later invoke the United Nations to intervene."

The South American OPEC member nation has also tried to aid Iran with fuel supplies amid sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Rights groups say close to 6,000 people have been killed in attacks by Syrian security forces against civilian demonstrators and an increasingly powerful rebel insurgency.

The United States and Europe are pressuring Assad to leave power. Russia and China this month vetoed a United Nations resolution calling on Assad to step aside.

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The Venezuelan tanker was last seen off the coast of Cyprus with a destination of Banias and the estimated arrival date of Wednesday, AIS ship tracking on Reuters showed. The satellite tracking has been switched off since Wednesday.

The shipment comes at a critical time for Syria, which has faced worsening energy shortages this winter after Western sanctions all but halted imports, which are needed to meet half the country's diesel demand.

Syria's oil minister spoke about a possibility of Venezuelan imports in January, and traders said the Negra Hipolita diesel shipment to Syria was the second delivery in the past three months.

The vessel can carry 47,000 tonnes, which if fully loaded would be worth around $50 million. It was not clear how much diesel the ship was carrying.

While there is no blanket embargo on supplying fuel to Syria, its state-owned oil firm Sytrol, responsible for organising fuel imports and exports, was placed on a U.S. blacklist last summer, and the EU followed suit in December.

The European Union has stopped short of banning product deliveries for humanitarian reasons, but oil traders said most deliveries have stopped anyway as traditional suppliers are increasingly reluctant to do business with Syria.

Normally an exporter of crude oil even in peacetime, Syria has relied on imports for more than half of its annual consumption of 5 million tonnes diesel because of a shortage of domestic refining capacity. International sanctions have stopped Syrian oil exports since September last year, drastically stretching government budget revenues.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Nigeria's main oil union said Thursday it would try to shut down the country's oil and gas production from Sunday, as part of a crippling national strike over spiraling fuel prices.

The strike began Monday after the Nigerian government reversed a two-decade-long subsidy program that had kept gas prices low for Nigerian consumers.

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Anger over the government's decision has led to demonstrations across Africa's most populous nation, and related violence has left at least 10 people dead.

 

A statement Thursday by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) said that if the government does not restore the subsidies, the union would have to act.

"We are hereby notifying the Federal Government of Nigeria ... that [we] shall be forced to go ahead and apply the bitter option of ordering the systematic shutting down of oil and gas production with effect from ... 0000 hours of Sunday Jan 15,'' the union said in a statement.

• PHOTOBLOG: Nigerians protest fuel price rises

Protesters say they want a permanent change in Nigeria, a move away from leaders who send their families abroad for schooling and medical checkups while the rest subsist on less than $2 a day.

"They want to cut us off," said Anthony Abang, a 32-year-old unemployed man who helped close down a Lagos highway. "They want to kill our future."

Gas prices doubled overnight
President Goodluck Jonathan removed subsidies on Jan. 1 that had kept gasoline prices low for more than two decades. Overnight, prices at the pump more than doubled, from $1.70 per gallon to at least $3.50 per gallon. The costs of food and transportation also doubled.

Jonathan insists the move was necessary to save the country an estimated $8 billion a year, which he promises will go toward badly needed road and public projects.

But Nigerians marching through the streets in all parts of the country have seen government promises go unfulfilled before, while politicians got richer by stealing funds from planned public work projects. Many Nigerians don't even have electricity and clean drinking water.

That anger has seen some protesters confront police, set burning roadblocks and attack government offices. At least 10 people have been killed.

On Wednesday in Minna, the capital of the central Niger state, youths attacked the governor's house, forcing him to flee by helicopter. A mob also killed a police officer.

Oil prices rose above $102 a barrel on Thursday following concerns about the strike in Nigeria.

However, even if Nigerian production is slowed, oil in inventories could continue to supply foreign markets for a time.

"A complete shutdown, if carried out, is likely to have a rather large detrimental effect on Nigerian output, even though exports could continue from their inventories in the short term," financial institution Barclays Capital recently said.

Nigeria is a top supplier of crude to the U.S., producing about 2.4 million barrels a day from the swamps of its southern delta to massive offshore oil fields. Oil accounts for up to 80 percent of revenues in Nigeria, a nation of more than 160 million people.

The president insists the removing the subsidy was necessary to save the country an estimated $8 billion a year -- money which he promises will go toward badly needed road and public projects.

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However, protesters distrust the government, and say it should first cut corruption in a nation where military rulers and politicians have stolen billions of dollars.

In Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital of 15 million, several hundred protesters on Wednesday took over a major highway leading to the islands where the wealthy live. One protester carried a signed that read: "We are ready for the civil war."

Fears about violence were heightened as the leader of a radical Islamist sect challenged the authority of Nigeria's president in an online video. The video by Imam Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the sect known as Boko Haram, will aggravate religious and ethnic tensions in this nation of more than 160 million.

Attorney General Mohammed Bello Adoke has warned that the government "will not hesitate to bring to bear the full weight of the law" against violent protesters. He also said the strike by major labor unions violates a court injuction.

"Adoke also told public workers the government will implement a "no work, no pay" policy for those who join the strike. However, public workers already go weeks without pay in Nigeria at times because of corruption and mismanagement.

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Reuters, the Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.