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 ...

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 ...

When the Malian city of Timbuktu fell to Islamist rebels last April, the destruction of its immense cultural treasures did not begin at once. It wasn’t even clear, at first, who exactly was in charge ...

French and Malian soldiers regained control of the ancient city of Timbuktu on Monday, much to the joy of Timbuktu residents. But as the Islamist rebels who had taken it over fled, they torched a ...

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 ...

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 ...

As the Malian military tried to retake the storied city of Timbuktu from Islamic extremists, scholars feared for the fate of ancient artifacts and mosques that testify to its historic grandeur.

It has all the elements of a classic adventure novel. An intrepid librarian ventures across deserts and through jungles to unearth ancient manuscripts, building a great library in a legendary city, ...