A Reuters report indicates that some 20,000 books at the Ahmed Baba Institute may have been destroyed by the rebels, who have been fighting the government of the Saharan nation for about a year in the ...

It was early in the summer of 2012, and at the Mamma Haidara Library in Timbuktu, a clandestine operation was under way. Night after night, a team under the direction of the library's founder, Abdel ...

As rebels searched the bags of the truck passengers at a checkpoint near Timbuktu, one man was trying to hide his nervousness. Mohamed Diagayete, an owlish scholar with an eager smile, was silently ...

As the desert inches south into the city of Timbuktu, the sand settles on your skin and the air feels heavy in your lungs. When I travelled there nine years ago, the mythical city, home to the shrines ...

French and Malian troops retook control of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on Monday, after Islamist rebel occupiers fled the ancient Sahara trading town, torching several buildings. The ...

The fate of tens of thousands ancient manuscripts in Mali remained uncertain Monday as French troops liberated the city of Timbuktu from Islamic insurgents who were said to have set fire to the ...

Timbuktu conjures up images of long camel caravans out on the edge of the sand-strewn Sahara — a remoteness so legendary that the ancient city is still a byword for the end of the earth. The city ...

While French and Malian forces have taken control of Timbuktu's airport in what NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports may be a turning point in their fight against Islamist extremists, there's also word ...

The Guardian reports that fleeing insurgents burned down two Timbuktu library buildings containing manuscripts dating back to the 13th century. According to the story, one of the destroyed buildings ...

If Bamako really does fall into the hands of Islamists it would mark a stunning reversal — and not only for Mali’s military junta, whose seizure of power in 2020 on a wave of anti-French sentiment ...

'They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people' You can save this article by registering for free here.

GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops retook control of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on Monday after Islamist rebel occupiers fled the ancient Sahara trading town and torched ...