French-led troops surround fabled Timbuktu

January 28, 2013 16:07

French-led troops surrounded Mali's fabled desert city of Timbuktu today after seizing its airport in a lightning advance against Islamists who have been driven from key northern strongholds.

French paratroopers swooped in to block any fleeing Islamists while ground troops coming from the south seized the airport in the ancient city which has been one of the bastions of the extremists who have controlled the north for 10 months.

"We control the airport at Timbuktu," a senior officer with the Malian army told AFP. "We did not encounter any resistance."

French army spokesman Colonel Thierry Burkhard told AFP the troops, backed up by helicopters, had seized control of the so-called Niger Loop -- the area alongside the curve of the Niger River flowing between Timbuktu and Gao -- in less than 48 hours.

A fabled caravan town on the edge of the Sahara desert, Timbuktu was for centuries a key centre of Islamic learning and has become a byword for exotic remoteness in the Western imagination.

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