WASHINGTON - In a sinister slip through Navy security, suicide bombers in a small boat tore a gaping hole in a U.S. warship Thursday at a refueling stop in a Yemeni harbor on the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. officials say. The blast killed six members of the crew, injured 35 and left 11 missing.
The crippled ship was tilting slightly in the harbor at Aden, Yemen, but the Navy said it was not in danger of sinking.
No one has claimed responsibility, Defense Secretary William Cohen told a Pentagon news conference.
President Clinton said the attack on the USS Cole, one of the world's most advanced warships, appeared to be an act of terrorism, the worst against the U.S. military since the bombing of an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed 19 troops.
''We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable,'' Clinton pledged.
He dispatched to Yemen investigative teams from the FBI, the State Department and the Pentagon. Clinton also ordered a heightened state of alert for all U.S. military installations around the world.
After the attack, ambulances rushed to the port, and Americans working with Yemeni authorities cordoned off the area. Yemeni police sources said without elaboration that a number of people had been detained for questioning; it was not clear whether any were suspects.
The State Department issued a worldwide alert, saying it was extremely concerned about the possibility of violence against U.S. citizens and interests. Americans were urged to maintain ''a high level of vigilance.''
In a parallel travel warning, Americans were advised to defer all travel to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and those already there were told to stay at home or get to a safe location. Americans were warned not to go to Yemen.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh talked with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, pledged his cooperation in the investigation and visited some of the injured who were hospitalized locally. He insisted in a CNN interview that his country did not harbor ''terrorist elements'' and said, ''I don't think it's a terrorist attack.''
The Pentagon said it was contacting families and would not release victims' names until Friday. But the parents of sailor Craig Wibberley, 19, of Williamsport, Md., confirmed Thursday night that their son was killed in the bombing, according to The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Md.
It was the first attack targeting the U.S. military in Yemen since the Pentagon pulled out all 100 American military personnel based there in January 1993 after bombings outside the U.S. Embassy and at hotels where some Americans were staying. U.S. intelligence has blamed Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organization for some of those bombings.
The Cole is a $1 billion guided missile destroyer home-ported at Norfolk, Va. It had sailed through the Red Sea and was en route to the Persian Gulf where it was to perform maritime intercept operations in support of the U.N. embargo against Iraq. The ship has a crew of about 350 people.
Navy medical teams were en route to the scene Thursday to treat those injured in the 5:15 a.m. EDT explosion, Pentagon officials said. U.S. aircraft capable of evacuating the injured were also scheduled to fly to Aden.
The incident was all the more stunning given that U.S. forces in the Middle East have been on a heightened state of alert in recent days and security plans for a port visit like the Cole's are drawn up in advance.
The Cole had just arrived in the harbor and was scheduled to leave in about four hours, officials said, suggesting the attackers may have known the ship's schedule and the procedures for a refueling stop.
Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, said he could not fault the Cole's crew for not preventing the midday attack that apparently was carried out by two men in a small harbor craft that was helping tie up the ship's mooring lines at a fueling facility in the middle of the Aden harbor.
As a participant in normal harbor operations, the small boat's presence did not raise suspicions, Clark said.
''I have no reason to think this was anything but a senseless act of terrorism,'' Clark said.
After helping the Cole moor, the small boat came alongside the warship and apparently detonated a high-explosive bomb, killing themselves in the process. Some reports said the two men in the boat stood at attention as the bomb exploded, although Clark said he could not verify such details based on early information.
The explosion ripped a hole 20 feet high and 40 feet wide in the midsection of the ship, flooding the main engine compartment. Clark said the flooding was brought under control and the ship was not in danger of sinking.
Clark displayed a Navy photograph of the damaged ship. The jagged edges of the hole in the hull protruded inward, suggesting the explosive force came from outside the ship at roughly the water level.
Women sailors were among the casualties, Clark said, although identities of the dead and injured were not released pending notification of relatives.
Pressed to explain why the Navy would not have checked the credentials of harbor crews more carefully, Cohen said it would have been ''very difficult if not impossible to protect against this kind of incident.''
''Our vigilance cannot eliminate all risk,'' Cohen said.
Clark said the U.S. Embassy in Aden made the arrangements for the local harbor support.
At a State Department news conference, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared: ''We will hold those who committed it accountable and take appropriate steps.''
She said this is no time for the United States to ''retreat from our responsibilities'' in the region.
''We are operating in a world that is filled with a variety of threats. But that doesn't mean that we can crawl into an ostrichlike mode. We are eagles,'' Albright said.
No other U.S. ships were in Aden at the time of the attack.
The explosion was ''so loud I thought it was from inside the hotel. The windows in 21 of our 33 rooms were shattered, and many of the television sets fell and broke,'' said Ahmed Mohammed Al-Naderi, manager of the port-side Rock Hotel. ''Thank God, none of the guests or hotel personnel were injured.''
William Arkin, a military expert who specializes in Gulf affairs, said Yemen became a more frequent refueling stop for Navy ships following a December 1997 U.S. government policy decision to open up contacts and cooperation with the country. He questioned the wisdom of using Aden, considering that refueling also is available in nearby Djibouti, which Arkin said presents less of a terrorism risk.
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On the Net:
Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil/
State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affair's country page on Yemen: http://www.state.gov/www/regions/nea/country/cp-yemen.html