Attacks[edit]
Starting in 2008 the
Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb began kidnapping groups of tourists in the Sahel region.
[37] In January 2009, four tourists were kidnapped near the Mali-Niger border after attending a cultural festival at
Anderamboukané.
[38] One of these tourists was subsequently murdered.
[39] As a result of this and various other incidents a number of states including France,
[40] Britain
[41] and the US,
[42] began advising their citizens to avoid travelling far from Bamako. The number of tourists visiting Timbuktu dropped precipitously to around 6000 in 2009 and to only 492 in the first four months of 2011.
[36]
Because of the security concerns, the Malian government moved the 2010
Festival in the Desert from
Essakane to the outskirts of Timbuktu.
[43][44] In November 2011 gunmen attacked tourists staying at a hotel in Timbuktu, killing one of them and kidnapping three others.
[45][46] This was the first terrorist incident in Timbuktu itself.
On 1 April 2012, one day after the capture of
Gao, Timbuktu was captured from the Malian military by the
Tuareg rebels of the
MNLA and
Ansar Dine.
[47] Five days later, the MNLA declared the region independent of Mali as the nation of
Azawad.
[48] The declared political entity was not recognized by any local nations or the international community and it collapsed three months later on 12 July.
[49]
On 28 January 2013, French and Malian government troops began retaking Timbuktu from the Islamist rebels.
[50] The force of 1,000 French troops with 200 Malian soldiers retook Timbuktu without a fight. The Islamist groups had already fled north a few days earlier, having set fire to the
Ahmed Baba Institute, which housed many important manuscripts. The building housing the Ahmed Baba Institute was funded by South Africa, and held 30,000 manuscripts. BBC World Service radio news reported on 29 January 2013 that approximately 28,000 of the manuscripts in the Institute had been removed to safety from the premises before the attack by the Islamist groups, and that the whereabouts of about 2,000 manuscripts remained unknown.
[51] It was intended to be a resource for Islamic research.
[52]
On 30 March 2013, jihadist rebels
infiltrated into Timbuktu just nine days prior to a
suicide bombing on a Malian army checkpoint at the international airport killing a soldier. Fighting lasted until 1 April, when French warplanes helped Malian ground forces chase the remaining rebels out of the city center.