Workers at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula welcome the USS Cole

Seventeen US sailors died and 36 were injured in the attack on 12 October.

Repairs are expected to take about a year and are likely to cost about $150m.

The USS Cole was carried aboard the Blue Martin, a specially designed Norwegian transport ship, to Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where the boat was built.

A patch for a hole 12 metres by 12 metres (40 feet by 40 feet) in the ship's hull will be welded in place before the USS Cole is unloaded from the transport ship, and its weapons unloaded.

Long planning

Yemen's Interior Minister, Hussein Arab, said on Tuesday that the operation against the USS Cole had been planned since 1997 and was carried out by Islamic mujahedeen who had fought the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.

Police are still hunting several Yemenis suspected of involvement in the bombing.

Yemeni officials have named but not apprehended the man they believe gave the orders for the attack.

Muhammad Omar al-Harazi, Yemeni officials say, called the attack but was not necessarily the mastermind behind it.

Charges

Earlier this month, six people were charged with complicity in the bomb attack on the Cole.

The ship will go into dry dock next month

The six - all from the Yemeni city of Lahij - are expected to appear in court in January. Two men are accused of being directly involved in the attack, and four others are charged with helping them.

The US has said it believes the attack on its warship was instigated by, among others, the Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, who is thought to be living in Afghanistan.

Yemeni officials have cast doubt on the involvement of Mr Bin Laden, who is accused by the US of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa that killed more than 220 people.