On October 12, 2000, one year prior to &lt;a href="9/11"&gt;9/11&lt;/a&gt;, Yemen became an early theater in the War on Terrorism, when the USS Cole bombing killed 17 American sailors and wounded 40 off the port coast of Aden, Yemen. In the aftermath, the government of Yemen rounded up numerous suspected terrorists, many of whom were identified as members of al-Qaeda.