Mali crisis: French-led troops 'enter Timbuktu'
BBC News online - 28 January 2013
French and Malian troops cross the desert to Timbuktu
French-led
troops in Mali have entered the historic city of Timbuktu encountering
little resistance, French and Malian military sources.
French President Francois Hollande declared that the joint forces were "winning this battle".
They have been pushing north in their offensive against Islamist rebels.
They seized Gao, north Mali's biggest city, on Saturday.
Islamists seized the north of the country last year, but have been losing ground since French forces launched an operation earlier this month.
Analysis
French troops seem to have been very successful in retaking the major towns that had been occupied by Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda for months.
Gao was reconquered over the weekend and Timbuktu should be falling within hours. Kidal will be next.
But this rapid advance has mainly been made possible by the fact that most rebel fighters had left their positions in the few days preceding the French-led operations.
Islamist combatants melted away with all their vehicles and weapons into desert hideouts. Hunting them down in this vast region they know better than any army will be much harder.
The French are hoping for a quick deployment of thousands more African forces but without the experience of the terrain and the equipment, these troops will achieve nothing.
This second phase is likely to last months and the French may well be on the frontline longer than they have said in public.
Most militants appear to have moved out to desert hideouts, says the BBC's Thomas Fessy in the capital, Bamako.
The AU decided to contribute $50m (£32m) to the multinational force, in what the BBC's James Copnall says is an attempt to start the ball rolling for what promises to be a costly operation.
On Monday afternoon, a French military spokesman said troops had moved into Timbuktu after blocking roads surrounding it.
Meanwhile, a Malian army colonel told the AFP news agency: "The Malian army and the French army are in complete control of the city of Timbuktu."
But reports have emerged that militants had destroyed a library of ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 13th Century.
Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford, who is with the joint forces, showed some charred documents and piles of empty boxes at the library said to have contained the manuscripts, and said vaults beneath the building had been emptied.
The library, the Ahmed Baba institute, held about 30,000 manuscripts, and includes documents about centuries of life in the city, Mali and neighbouring countries.
French army spokesman Col Thierry Burkhard had told the BBC earlier that "substantial airpower" had been used to support about 1,000 French and 200 Malian forces in their offensive against militants in Timbuktu.
He said French forces had taken access points to the city during the night.
Treasures of Timbuktu
- Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th Centuries
- 700,000 manuscripts survive in public libraries and private collections
- Books on religion, law, literature and science
- Added to Unesco world heritage list in 1988 for its three mosques and 16 cemeteries and mausoleums
- They played a major role in spreading Islam in West Africa; the oldest dates from 1329
- Islamists destroyed mausoleums after seizing the city
Once Timbuktu is secured, the
French-led troops are expected to focus on the last rebel stronghold,
Kidal, near the border with Algeria.
The secular Tuareg rebel group, MNLA, said it had taken charge. AFP quoted a spokesman of an Ansar Dine breakaway faction as saying that it was jointly "ensuring security" with the MNLA.
Once Kidal is taken, the first phase of the French operation will be over, our correspondent says.
The second phase will be to track down the militants to their desert hideouts, which could prove a much more difficult task, he adds.
Mr Fabius warned that the militants had adopted a "strategy of evasion and some of them could return in the north".
President Hollande later outlined plans for the operation, saying African troops would take over once French forces had retaken key towns.
The French would then return to their bases, and from then on their sole task would be to support and train Malian forces, he added.
"Just as we went into action rapidly, we will draw back to the starting points," he said.
French officials said they now had 2,900 troops in Mali, backed by 2,700 African forces in Mali and neighbouring Chad.
The African contingent is expected to be bolstered to 7,900, including 2,200 troops promised by Chad, AP news agency quotes a Nigerian military official, Col Shehu Usman Abdulkadir, as saying.
Labels: Africa, France, Heritage, Islam, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Monday, January 28, 2013
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