This file photo released by the FBI Thursday, May 15, 2003 shows Fahd al-Quso, who was charged as an al-Qaida member who helped to plan the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in 2000. Yemeni officials say an airstrike has killed a top al-Qaida leader who was wanted in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Local official Abu Bakr bin Farid said Fahd al-Quso was killed Sunday, May 6, 2012 along with an aide in an airstrike in the southern Shabwa province. (AP Photo/FBI, File)
ADEN — Yemeni Al-Qaeda leader Fahd al-Quso who was wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole has been killed in an air raid in eastern Yemen on Sunday, a tribal chief told Agence France-Presse.
“Fahd al-Quso, who was wanted by the United States for the attack against the USS Cole, was killed tonight (Sunday) in an American raid on the Rafadh region” in the Shabwa province, said tribal chief Abdel Magid bin Farid al-Awlaqi.
The October 2000 attack on the US Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, in Yemen’s port of Aden killed 17 sailors and wounded 40 more.
Quso was killed when two missiles slammed near his home in Rafadh, east of Ataq, the provincial capital of Shabwa province, the tribal chief said, adding that two of the suspect’s body guards were also killed in the raid.
Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack on the USS Cole which was carried out when militants riding an explosives-laden skiff blew a 30-foot by 30-foot (10-meter by 10 meter) hole in the USS Cole.
The USS Cole was in the port of Aden for a routine fuel stop when it was attacked.