[HanafiUK]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...africa-18665522

Islamists vow to smash every mausoleum in Timbuktu Timbuktu is listed hy the UN as a world heritage site
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories
'The Afghanistan of West Africa'
Timbuktu on Unesco danger list
Life in Timbuktu under Islamist rule

Islamist rebels occupying the ancient city of Timbuktu in Mali have vowed to smash every mausoleum, in the face of international protests.

A spokesman for the Ansar Dine group, Sanda Ould Boumama, said it would "destroy every mausoleum in the city - all of them, without exception".

The centuries-old shrines to Islamic saints, revered by Sufi Muslims, are regarded as idolatrous by the group.

Three mausoleums were reportedly destroyed by the militants on Saturday.

Eyewitnesses say militants equipped with tools such as chisels and hoes gathered on Sunday at another site, shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great").

Mali's Culture and Tourism Minister, Diallo Fadima Toure, urged the UN to take action to stop "crimes" against her country's architectural treasures.

Ansar Dine, which has ties to al-Qaeda, seized northern Mali in March, in tandem with ethnic Tuareg rebels.

However, the alliance between the two groups has frayed and the Islamists now say they control the territory after driving out their former allies.

'Armed madmen'

Another spokesman for Ansar Dine, Oumar Ould Hamaha, told Reuters news agency by phone: "We are subject to religion and not to international opinion

"Building on graves is contrary to Islam. We are destroying the mausoleums because it is ordained by our religion."

Continue reading the main story
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
Letters between rulers, advisers and merchants on subjects as varied as taxation, commerce, marriage and prostitution
Added to Unesco world heritage list in 1988 for its three large mosques and 16 cemeteries and mausoleums
Unesco says they played a major role in spreading Islam in West Africa; the oldest dates from 1329
Life in Timbuktu under Islamist rule
Why do we know Timbuktu?

A local journalist told AFP news agency on Sunday that the Islamists were planning to smash four mausoleums in the cemetery at the 14th-Century Djingareyber mosque.

"There are many of us watching them destroy the mausoleum," the journalist said on condition of anonymity.

"It hurts but we can't do anything. These madmen are armed, we can't do anything but they will be cursed that is for sure."

Reuters quoted a journalist as saying three mausoleums had been destroyed on Sunday but it was unclear if they were those at Djingareyber.

In another development, a Timbuktu resident told AFP on Sunday the Islamists had also threatened to destroy mosques.

"This morning the Islamists told us that if there are saints inside the mosques, they will also destroy these mosques," the unnamed resident said.

'War crimes'

Mali's government condemned the "destructive fury, comparable to war crimes" and a meeting of the UN's cultural body, Unesco, heard a call to respect Mali's heritage sites.

"I appeal to all those engaged in the conflict in Timbuktu to exercise their responsibility," Unesco session chairwoman Yeleonor Mitrofanova said at the conference in the Russian city of St Petersburg.

"For the sake of future generations, spare the legacy of their past."

Ansar Dine is reportedly made up of Islamist fighters from Mali and other African states including Algeria and Nigeria.

"What shocks me the most is the presence of foreigners among them who do it with mockery while shouting Allah Akbar," Timbuktu resident Hamed Mohamed told Reuters.

"For me it is a declaration of war and a crime against our cultural heritage. It is time that the international community helped us."

[HanafiUK]

(Reuters) - Militants from the al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine group destroyed mausoleums of Sufi saints with guns and pick-axes in the famed Mali city of Timbuktu for a second day, said witnesses on Sunday, ignoring international calls to halt the attacks.

The salafist Ansar Dine backs strict sharia, Islamic law, and considers the centuries-old shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam in Timbuktu to be idolatrous.





FREE GUIDES AND REPORTS FROM DIANOMI

ADVERTISEMENT






Day Trade Shares

Discover the Professional Secrets of Day Trading

Download Free Report

Sufi shrines have been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year.

The group has threatened to destroy all of the 16 main Sufi mausoleum sites in Timbuktu despite international outcry. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has called for an immediate halt to the attacks.

Local journalist Yaya Tandina told Reuters that about 30 militants armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes destroyed three mausoleums of saints on Sunday.

"They had armed men guarding the door. Just like yesterday, the population did not react. They (local people) said we need to let them (the Islamists) do what they want, hoping that someday we will rebuild the tombs," Tandina said.

Residents said the destruction was halted around midday when some of the militants went to a mosque in the centre of the city, but it was unclear if they would continue.

"We are subject to religion and not to international opinion. Building on graves is contrary to Islam. We are destroying the mausoleums because it is ordained by our religion," Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, told Reuters by telephone from the northern Mali city on Sunday.

Timbuktu resident Hamed Mohamed said the Islamists destroyed the tombs of saints Sidi Elmety, Mahamane Elmety and Cheick Sidi Amar, all in the west of the city.

Ansar Dine is made up of Islamist fighters of various nationalities including Malians, Algerians and Nigerians.

"What shocks me the most is the presence of foreigners among them who do it with mockery while shouting Allah Akbar," Mohamed said.

"For me it is a declaration of war and a crime against our cultural heritage. It is time that the international community helped us."

"OUTRAGEOUS"

Mali's defence minister condemned the attacks on Sunday and said there was a need for urgent action in north Mali.

"What is happening in Timbuktu is really outrageous. You can not want to be there for people and simultaneously undertake actions that offend their sensibilities," Colonel Yamoussa Camara said in Niamey after meeting with Niger's prime minister.

Ansar Dine and allies such as the al Qaeda splinter group MUJWA, have appropriated a separatist uprising by local Tuareg MNLA rebels and now control two-thirds of Mali's desert north territory with includes the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

The size of the territory now under their control is bigger than France, heightening fears Mali will become a haven for jihadists.

The U.N. Security Council has said it would be ready to support military intervention by Mali's neighbours to help the country take back the north, but first needs more details of their plans.

The Timbuktu attack came days after UNESCO placed the city on its list of heritage sites in danger and recalls the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two 6th-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

Located on an old Saharan trading route that saw salt from the Arab north exchanged for gold and slaves from black Africa to the south, Timbuktu blossomed in the 16th century as an Islamic seat of learning, home to priests, scribes and jurists.

Mali had in recent years sought to create a desert tourism industry around Timbuktu but even before April's rebellion many tourists were being discouraged by a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in the region claimed by al Qaeda-linked groups.

[Fekay]

May GOD guide or destroy these people. They're like a cancer to Islam. The goons of Dajjal will be these wahabbis who have(in a sense) united with Jews to destroys mMuslims and Islam.

[CashewNut]