Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has pointed a finger of blame at Israel's intelligence service Mossad for the October 12 bombing of the USS Cole that cost the lives of 17 American sailors.
"If I refer to Mossad, and it is probable that it is (involved), that's because Islamic movements such as Islamic Jihad ... were infiltrated by Israel during their stay in Afghanistan" in the 1980s, Saleh said late Tuesday.
The Yemeni leader, at a meeting in the southern province of Hadramaut, explained that the authorities were still unclear as to who was behind the deadly suicide bombing in the port of Aden.
"Was it a state, the Israeli Mossad, or Jihad Islamists or others?" he asked.
"We are trying to make sure of the nationalities of those (two bombers) who were killed in the explosion, because all our information on the subject was provided by witnesses," said Saleh.
"Some people said they (the bombers) had an Egyptian accent, others said they had a Saudi accent," he said.
The president said last week in an interview with the Arab satellite TV station MBC that one of the bombers was an Egyptian national "according to the early results of the inquiry" -- SANAA (AFP)
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