One of suspected Cole bombers was Egyptian, Yemen's president says

ADEN, Yemen - One of the men believed to have bombed the destroyer USS Cole is an Egyptian, and several senior members of a Muslim militant group have been detained in connection with the blast, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said Wednesday.

Saleh said the detainees - including Yemenis, Egyptians and Algerians - belonged to Islamic Jihad. He described the group as consisting of Arabs who fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden was prominently involved in the Afghanistan resistance, but Saleh declined to say whether the attackers or detainees had any connection to bin Laden's Al-Qaida group.

''It is not right to say so-and-so. We shall await the outcome of the investigation. The results will be out soon,'' Saleh said in an interview with MBC television, a Saudi-owned satellite channel broadcast from London.

The president said his government had deported members of Islamic Jihad, but that ''pockets remain in hiding, dressed in Yemeni clothes.''

He said an eyewitness had identified one of the bomber suspects as an Egyptian.

An earlier report said the suspects spoke with a Saudi accent. ''It's possible to imitate an accent,'' Saleh said when asked whether his disclosure contradicted the earlier report.

The Oct. 12 attack on the Cole killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded 39 others. Officials believe two suicide bombers maneuvered a small boat next to the destroyer and detonated it.

Also Wednesday, sources close to the investigation said authorities had detained a Yemeni carpenter who allegedly helped the Cole's attackers refit their boat to carry explosives and a woman who bought the car they used to haul it.

The Yemeni sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said charges had not yet been filed in either case.

The carpenter confessed Tuesday that he had helped two men modify a small boat to carry explosives and then helped them load the explosives into the boat. It was not immediately clear if the man knew what the two planned to do with the bomb-laden boat. He was not named.

The carpenter had rented the men the house they used to work on the boat, Yemeni sources said. They said he was detained a day after the bombing but had provided details of his involvement only on Tuesday.

Security officials in Taiz, northwest of Aden, said on Wednesday that they had detained a woman who confessed the men gave her money to buy a car in her name that they used to haul their boat to shore. The woman was identified only as a Somali. No other details were immediately available.

Yemeni investigators have increasingly turned their attention to the network the bombers used to plan and carry out the attack.

If terrorism is proved, the Cole bombing would be the deadliest terrorist attack on the U.S. military since 19 Air Force personnel died in a 1996 truck-bomb explosion in Saudi Arabia.

A U.S. official, meanwhile, slightly altered the account of conditions at the time of the bombing.

A senior U.S. official said on condition of anonymity Wednesday that the Cole was in the third-highest state of alert when it entered the port Oct. 12. The Navy had earlier said the Cole and its crew were at the second-highest level.

Ships normally enter Aden at the third-highest level, known as Bravo, and there was apparently no reason to suspect Oct. 12 would be out of the ordinary. At Bravo, a number of rifle-toting sailors would have been keeping a watchful eye on the area from stations on the ship's deck. At the next highest level, a security boat might have accompanied the Cole, among other measures.

The U.S. Navy five days ago had altered its account of events leading to the bombing, saying earlier statements were based on initial reports from the ship that were either wrong or were misunderstood by Pentagon officials.