The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.
The USS Cole bombing was a suicide attack by the terrorist group al-Qaeda against USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy, on 12 October 2000, while she was being refueled in Yemen's Aden harbor.Seventeen U.S. Navy sailors were killed and thirty-seven injured in the deadliest attack against a United States naval vessel since the USS Stark incident in 1987.
Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack against the United States. A U.S. judge has held Sudan liable for the attack, while another has released over $13 million in Sudanese frozen assets to the relatives of those killed. The United States Navy has reconsidered its rules of engagement in response to this attack. On 30 October 2020, Sudan and the United States signed a bilateral claims agreement to compensate families of the sailors who died in the bombing. The agreement entered into force in February 2021.
USS Cole (DDG-67) is an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer home-ported in Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. Cole is named in honor of Marine Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, a machine-gunner killed in action on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945, during World War II. Cole is one of 62 authorized Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, and one of 21 members of the Flight I-class that utilized the 5 in(127 mm)/54 caliber gun mounts found on the earliest of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The ship was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding and was delivered to the Navy on 11 March 1996.
On 12 October 2000, Cole was bombed in a suicide attack carried out by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 sailors, injuring 39 others, and damaging the ship. On 29 November 2003, Cole engaged in her first overseas deployment after the bombing and subsequently returned to her home port of Norfolk, Virginia, on 27 May 2004 without incident.