USS Cole bombing

USS Cole bombing
Part of the Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen
The Military Sealift Command fleet ocean tug USNS Catawba towing USS Cole after the bombing.
Location	Aden, Yemen
Coordinates	12°48′08″N 45°00′19″E / 12.8022°N 45.0054°E / 12.8022; 45.0054
Date	12 October 2000; 23 years ago (2000-10-12) 11:18 am (UTC +03:00)
Target	USS Cole
Attack type	Suicide attack
Deaths	17 (plus two attackers)
Injured	37
Perpetrators	al-Qaeda

The USS Cole bombing was a suicide attack by 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.^[1]

Seventeen U.S. Navy sailors were killed and thirty-seven injured^[2] 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.^[3] The agreement entered into force in February 2021.^[4]