U.S.S. Cole Death Toll Continues to Rise
LINDA STOUFFER, CNN ANCHOR: And we have updated numbers for you now on the number of U.S. soldiers affected by this and the number of U.S. soldiers killed. Carl Rochelle has been working this story from the Pentagon, he has the very latest for us -- Carl.</s>CARL ROCHELLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the figures have been revised up as of this morning. The death toll has now been placed at seven. The 10 who are missing, the families of those sailors are being told that they are presumed dead; so the death toll is surely to rise in this, but seven confirmed dead at this point from sources here in the Pentagon; and the other 10 who are missing, who have been reported missing, are presumed to be dead, and that's what they are telling the families. The United States is putting a full-blown effort into trying to determine who was responsible for this, FBI investigative officials going into the area to try to determine what they can. Officials say they have confirmed that the explosion was external to the ship, and that is significant because that is proof positive that it wasn't something that went wrong inside of the ship; that, in fact, it was, as a earlier reported, the ship that pulled alongside, the two men who stood up on the deck, appearing to stand at some form of attention and then the ship exploding, blowing that 20-by-40 foot hole in the side of the ship, killing seven, 10 still missing, presumed dead, and injuring about 35 people additional to that -- all of those. Now, one direction the investigators are looking at is Osama Bin Laden who has been responsible for a great deal of terrorism in that area and has directly targeted the United States, but officials say they are not ruling out other groups also; among them, Hezbollah, Hamas and, officials say, especially the Egyptian Islamic Jihad cannot be ruled out. Officials looking very carefully at all of those organizations. Meanwhile, the injured are being taken care of. The Navy is trying to get in position to get that ship back into a form where they can repair it and move it back to the United States or to a port area where it can undergo further repairs and be put back in pretty good shape. Now back to you.</s>STOUFFER: Carl Rochelle. Thank you very much.