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TUNIS (AFP) - A Tunisian man crashed a pickup truck into the US embassy in Tunis in an apparent suicide bid after he was refused a visa which have would allowed him to be reunited with his American wife, US and Tunisian officials said.

AFP Photo



Nabil Ben Jaballah, 39, "had set light to a gas canister but was only slightly injured" when his Ford Ranger pickup caught fire after slamming into the embassy wall late Monday, officials said.

An official at the US embassy confirmed to AFP that Ben Jaballah had rammed his vehicle into the wall of the compound in "what seems to be a suicide attempt".

Security guards outside the embassy pulled the man from the wreck of his burnt-out vehicle and arrested him.

He told investigators in Tunisia that he "wanted to commit suicide after he failed to obtain a visa which would have allowed him to return to the United States and be with his American wife."

Ben Jaballah told investigators that he had become very emotional after a telephone conversation with his wife on Monday, and in an attempt to kill himself, he rammed his pickup truck into the outer wall of the US embassy at around 11:30 pm (2230 GMT).

An official at the State Department in Washington told AFP: "We do not believe this was a terrorist attack.

"The subject is married to an American citizen and was distraught at being denied a visa," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The official in Washington said the man had placed a small propane tank on the front seat of the truck in an apparent effort to cause an explosion when he crashed the pickup into the embassy wall.

While the truck caught fire, injuring the man and causing slight damage to the embassy wall, the propane tank did not explode, the official said.

The official said the truck was travelling at about 30 miles (50 kilometers) per hour when it struck the wall.

"The subject was wounded superficially and there was some cosmetic damage to the wall," the official said.

The perimeter wall bore no signs of the accident on Tuesday morning, but security had been stepped up outside the embassy, an AFP reporter in Tunis said.

Two extra police cars and members of Tunisia's national guard were deployed Tuesday in addition to the usual security detail outside the embassy, which lies on the road linking Tunis to the northern suburb of La Marsa.

Tunisian officials investigating the accident said Ben Jaballah entered the United States illegally from Canada in 1997, and settled in Boston, Massachusetts.

There, he married US citizen Denise Aikens-Young in March 2001, but did not take steps to put his papers in order with the immigration authorities until after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The US authorities rejected his application and he returned to Tunisia in March last year.



His wife joined him in the north African country, but returned to the United States "to try to put her husband's residency papers in order" from there. Ben Jaballah, meanwhile, applied for a resident's permit with the US embassy in Tunis, only to be rejected twice.

He told investigators that the double rejection of his application had caused him to "plunge into a nervous depression for which he underwent psychiatric treatment."

His alleged suicide attempt against the embassy wall was not his first, he told investigators.

Last week, he tried to asphyxiate himself by locking himself in his car and opening the nozzle on a gas canister. Ben Jaballah himself put a stop to that suicide bid, investigators said.

The US embassy said in a statement it was cooperating in investigations launched by Tunisian authorities.

In April 2002 a Tunisian man exploded a fuel tanker truck outside a synaogogue on the resort island of Djerba, killing 21 people, including 14 Germans.

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