Police in Yemen have arrested three new suspects in the bombing of the American
warship USS Cole in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed last year, a Yemeni government weekly said. The paper said the three had recently been detained in the capital and sent for interrogation to the southern port city of Aden, site of the apparent suicide bombing which crippled the U.S. destroyer in October.
Yemen has already arrested a dozen suspects over the attack, some of whom are reportedly Muslim militants. But officials have said the main suspect appears to have fled to Afghanistan. The government weekly, called 26 September and published by Yemen's armed forces, said U.S. forensic experts had told a team of Yemeni investigators visiting the United States that they had made progress in identifying one of the two attackers who died in the bombing.
DNA tests on remains of the dead attacker suggested he was a suspect named Hassan Saeed al-Khameri, it said. Witnesses saw two men carry out the suicide bombing with a small boat that exploded alongside the Cole as it refueled in Aden port.
U.S. officials have said Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, who is based in Afghanistan, may have been involved in the attack. Bin Laden, also accused by Washington of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, has publicly praised the Cole attack but denied involvement in it. - (Reuters)