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Mali: Islamists destroy Timbuktu heritage sites
Hardline Islamists occupying northern Mali went on the rampage in Timbuktu on Saturday, destroying ancient tombs of Muslim saints and threatening to wipe out every religious shrine in the fabled city.
The onslaught by armed militants from the fundamentalist Ansar Dine group was launched just two days after UNESCO named the city an endangered world heritage site because of the unrest in the vast desert north of Mali.
Witnesses said the Islamists had destroyed the ancient tomb of one revered Muslim figure after encircling a cemetery in the north of the Timbuktu, and were on the attack against another in the east.
Ansar Dine, one of the hardline Islamist groups which seized control of the vast desert north of Mali in the chaotic aftermath of a March coup in Bamako, said no site would be safe in Timbuktu.
“Ansar Dine will today destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception,” spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama told AFP through an interpreter from the city.
The Ansar Dine spokesman suggested Saturday’s action was in retaliation for the UNESCO decision to put the World Heritage site, a cradle of Islamic learning founded in the fifth century, on its endangered list on Thursday
“God is unique. All of this is haram (or forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. UNESCO is what?” he said, declaring that Ansar Dine, which wants to impose sharia law in the region, was acting “in the name of God.”
