On Thursday, 19 January 2006, an audio tape was released, presumably of Osama bin Laden, warning that al-Qaeda was planning more attacks against the United States.[1] The release of the tape came shortly after the United States' Central Intelligence Agency's Damadola airstrike in Pakistan, an attack that reportedly led to the deaths of Midhat Mursi, a veteran bomb and chemical expert and the head of an al-Qaeda training camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Khalid Habib, the al-Qaeda operations chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Abdul Rehman al Magrabi, a senior al-Qaeda operations commander, and 15 other people. Civilians were among the others killed, according to the Pakistani provincial government.
On the tape (which may have been recorded a month earlier), bin Laden boasted that "our situation is getting better, while your situation is getting worse." It also threatened future attacks on the United States, and simultaneously offered a "long truce", while not saying what the truce would involve. The White House immediately rejected the truce offer.[2]