DUBLIN: One of Barack Obama's presidential limousines on Monday became stuck on a ramp at the US embassy in Dublin, but US officials denied the car was "The Beast" which was carrying the president at the time.


Earlier, Irish state radio station RTE reported that it was Obama's heavily armoured Cadillac which had become grounded, but a Secret Service spokesman later said "it was a spare limo carrying staff and support personnel only".

The first cars in the presidential motorcade emerged up the ramp from the car park beneath the complex in Balls bridge and passed through the gates without incident, but one of the low-slung limos quickly ran into trouble when it became jammed.

"There was a loud kind of bang, metal-on-metal, grinding, crunching noise and the car was stuck," an RTE reporter said.The reporter said that as it drove out, the car appeared to have got its low underbelly caught on a piece of metal sticking up that a gate might lock into.

Barack and Michelle Obama were later driven to the helicopter waiting to whisk them to the village of Moneygall, from where one of Obama's great-great-great-grandfathers headed to the US in 1850.The heavily armoured Cadillac carrying the president, nicknamed "The Beast", is designed to withstand all manner of attacks.

The 24-hour stop in Ireland is the first stop in Obama's week-long tour of Europe, which will also take in Britain, the G8 summit in the French resort of Deauville and Poland. (AFP)