AMMAN(AP): Nearly 7,000 United Nations employees staged a one-day strike in Jordan on Monday, demanding pay raises to meet soaring food and fuel prices and high inflation.

The protest by employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees, forced the closure of 174 schools run by the agency and responsible for educating some 140,000 Jordan-based Palestinian boys and girls under the age of 14. UNRWA's 24 clinics were also closed.

UNRWA _ which was created after Israel's foundation in 1948 _ provides Palestinian refugees with basic and vocational education, primary health care and relief and social services.

It now cares for 4.6 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants living in camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Of the total refugees, Jordan hosts the largest number _ 1.9 million Palestinians _ displaced in two wars with Israel since the 1948 Mideast war.

One of the striking UNRWA employees said the agency did not raise salaries this year, despite soaring inflation, which doubled to 13 percent, and an across-the-board spike in prices, particularly for food and fuel.

If the demands were not met, the workers will stage an open-ended strike soon, added the worker, who said he earns $500 a month as an UNRWA teacher. He spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of losing his job.

UNRWA's Jordan spokesman Matar Saqer said the agency was negotiating possible salary increases with its striking employees. But he asserted that a high budget deficit makes it hard to meet all their demands immediately.

``We operate on thin margins and narrow lines to maintain services to Palestinian refugees at the current level,'' Mr. Saqer said.

Mr. Saqer said UNRWA is facing increased expenditures following the 3-week Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year and an envisaged deficit of $47 million in its 2009 budget of $560 million.