By Adama Diarra
GAO, Mali Mon Jan 28, 2013 1:27pm EST
GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and also Malian soldiers retook manage of Timbuktu, a new UNESCO World Heritage site, on Monday following Islamist rebel occupiers fled your ancient Sahara trading city and torched a few buildings, which include your expensive manuscript library.
The United States and European Union are generally backing a French-led intervention around Mali planned at removing the particular threat connected with radical Islamist jihadists while using West African state's inhospitable desert north as a springboard regarding worldwide attacks.
The recovery associated with Timbuktu implemented this speedi capture by means of French in addition to Malian energies in the weekend of Gao, another main in a niche community inside Mali's north in which experienced also been busy by the connections connected with Islamist militant communities considering that last year.
The two-week-old vision by means of France around its ex - Sahel colony, with the require of Mali's federal and also using large global support, offers pushed the actual Islamist rebels northwards from towns on the desert in addition to mountains.
Without some sort of opportunity being fired, 1,000 French troops in addition to paratroopers along with 200 Malian troops gripped Timbuktu airport terminal and surrounded madrid around the finance institutions with the Niger River , seeking to obstruct the particular escape with al Qaeda-allied insurgents.
In both Timbuktu as well as Gao, cheering crowds turned out to be able to encouraged the actual French and Malian troops.
A finally smaller population center around Mali's vast wilderness north, Kidal, experienced stayed in Islamist militant hands. But this secular Malian Tuareg MNLA rebels mentioned on Monday these people experienced taken cost inside Kidal after Islamist practitioners ruin it.
A Bamako-based diplomat confirmed the MNLA takeover of Kidal, stating your Tuaregs were being likely to make an effort to press long-standing needs regarding autonomy thus to their north region.
A French military services spokesman reported your attack makes at Timbuktu were currently being careful to prevent fight in the metropolis in order to not to injury cultural gifts along with mosques plus religious shrines in that which is thought to be a seat associated with Islamic learning.
But Timbuktu Mayor Ousmane Halle noted that will leaving behind Islamist gunmen had fixed ablaze a South African-funded library from the area containing thousands of very helpful manuscripts.
"The rebels set hearth on the newly-constructed Ahmed Baba Institute developed from the South Africans . This occured four days to weeks ago," Ousmane instructed Reuters by means of cell phone from Bamako. He mentioned your dog have received your details coming from his chief regarding marketing and sales communications who had visited south with the area every day ago.
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