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Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi called for allowing Christians and Jews to perform pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holiest place. Speaking following prayers with the presidents of Mali, Sierra Leone, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal on the occasion of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday in Timbuktu, Mali, late on Monday, Qadhafi said "Mecca should be a meeting point to all people except heretics and impure". He said that Christians and Jews are not heretics or impure and "believe in God" and should be allowed to go to pilgrimage in Mecca. Qadhafi challenged Muslim religious leaders to allow US President George W. Bush to enter...

Mali’s army spokesperson has said Russian soldiers have deployed to the northern city of Timbuktu to train Malian forces at a base vacated by French troops last month amid persistent insecurity in a country where large swaths of territory are out of the government’s control. The Malian government said late last year that “Russian trainers” had arrived in the country, but Bamako and Moscow have so far provided few details on the deployment, including on how many soldiers are involved or the Russian troops’ precise mission. On December 23, a group of Western countries led by former colonial power France,...

An obscure king who ruled West Africa in the 14th century has been named the richest person in history in a new inflation-adjusted list of the world's 25 wealthiest people of all time. Spanning 1,000 years and with a combined fortune of $4.317 trillion, only three of the list's 25 are alive today; none of them are women and 14 of them are American. Using the annual 2199.6per cent rate of inflation, where $100million in 1913 is equal to $2.299.63billion in 2012, Celebrity Net Worth's list includes familiar names like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett; but sitting at number one...

Swede Johan Gustafsson, who was kidnapped by al-Qaeda in Mali in 2011, has spoken publicly for the first time since his release this summer after almost six years in captivity. Gustafsson, from Värnamo, southern Sweden, returned home in June after five years and seven months in captivity in Mali. Sweden has refused to provide details about how his release was secured, describing it only as the result of “years of efforts” by police, diplomats and Swedish and international authorities. […] Gustafsson, 43, was abducted in Timbuktu, northern Mali, in November 2011 along with South African national Stephen McGown and Dutchman...

The Swedish hip-hop artist Timbuktu has discovered to his horror that his much-loved African American uncle has become an avid campaigner for US presidential hopeful Donald Trump. […] “As soon as Trump delivered his punchline, my uncle and the little huddle of men and women around him started to applaud,” the rapper, whose real name is Jason Diakité, wrote in an article in Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “G** D**n! Uncle Obi! Behind Trump!” […] In his article, Diakité said he had challenged his uncle when he rung up for a family call. ”Yes, that’s completely right,” Diakité quoted his uncle...

Two U.N. peacekeepers were killed and nine others injured in a suicide attack on a patrol base in northern Mali, the U.N. peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) said on Saturday. A vehicle exploded on Saturday morning next to the base in the village of Ber, about 60 km (40 miles) east of the desert city of Timbuktu, the statement said. It did not give the nationalities of the soldiers, although one MINUSMA official said that both the soldiers who died were from neighboring Burkina Faso. …

When rebel forces, led by Arab-speaking Muslims, seized control of the Central African Republic this March, it deepened fears that a co-ordinated Islamist insurgency could now be spreading through swathes of the continent. Four months on, the landlocked country is living through a reign of terror, largely directed against its Christian minority.“Churches have been routinely robbed and pillaged here, while Muslim mosques have been left untouched,” Mgr Cyriaque Gbate Doumalo, secretary-general of the Central African Republic’s Catholic bishops’ conference, told me in an interview. “Our public institutions aren’t functioning and our hospitals have been ransacked, leaving the sick and destitute...

(Jack Martin speaks after being named the Detroit Public Schools' newest emergency manager by Governor Rick Snyder at Davison Elementary-Middle School Auditorium in Detroit on July 15.) Michigan’s governor on July 15 appointed a seasoned financial guru to run Detroit’s ailing public school district, a move that many observers hailed as a saving grace for the city's classrooms in decline. Three days later, Detroit filed for bankruptcy. Jack Martin, who took office as emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools last Monday, is now tasked with overhauling Motown's rusting educational system during a period of economic calamity. Roy Roberts, Martin’s...

When Islamist rebels set fire to two libraries in Timbuktu earlier this year, many feared the city's treasure trove of ancient manuscripts had been destroyed. But many of the texts had already been removed from the buildings and were at that very moment being smuggled out of the city, under the rebels' noses. "These manuscripts are really precious to us. They are family heirlooms. Our history, our heritage," says Dr Abdel Kader Haidara, owner of one of Timbuktu's biggest private libraries, containing manuscripts dating back to the 16th Century. "In our family there have been generations and generations of great...

Timbuktu, Mali — Her light-skinned master no longer beats her with a camel whip. He no longer makes her work from dawn to night without pay. He fled with his family four months ago, along with the Islamists who briefly ruled this historic city. “I am free,” said Aminaya Traore, a 50-year-old woman who was born a slave. “I can do whatever I want.” Across this sand-swept city, hundreds of modern-day slaves are experiencing a sense of liberation, many for the first time. Nearly all the lighter-skinned Tuaregs and Arab Moors who for generations exploited them have fled the city,...

The mainstream media continues to align itself with the jihad force. NBC News finally decides to address the Islamic destruction of ancient documents in Timbuktu, but instead of dealing honestly with this problem of Islamic contempt for the artifacts of other religions, it dares to assign this vicious, anti-human destruction to other religions. Ian Johnston, a Staff Writer for NBC News, writes this about the recent destruction of archaeologically important sites in Mali: "To many in the West, such actions are simply wanton vandalism. However, experts say the thinking behind it is actually part of a wider tradition of rooting...

France’s president, François Hollande paid a triumphant visit to this ancient city on Saturday, receiving a rapturous welcome from thousands of people who gathered next to a 14th-century mosque to dance, play drums and chant “Vive la France!” The muezzin, whose singing calls residents to pray five times a day, wore a scarf in the colors of the French flag as he shouted, “Vive Hollande!

The preservationists of Timbuktu’s centuries-old artifacts have been holding their breath for weeks, waiting for the moment when the French military would seize back Mali’s ancient northern capital from the Islamic militants who have occupied it for 10 months. At stake were the city’s most precious treasures: tens of thousands of centuries-old, priceless calligraphed manuscripts, whose fate under the jihadists’ rule was deeply uncertain. In interviews with TIME on Monday, preservationists said that in a large-scale rescue operation early last year, shortly before the militants seized control of Timbuktu, thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmed Baba Institute...

Fleeing Islamist insurgents burnt two buildings containing priceless books as French-led troops approached al-Qaida-allied fighters on Saturday torched two buildings that held the manuscripts, some of which dated back to the 13th century. They also burned down the town hall, the governor's office and an MP's residence, and shot dead a man who was celebrating the arrival of the French military. French troops and the Malian army reached the gates of Timbuktu on Saturday and secured the town's airport. But they appear to have got there too late to rescue the leather-bound manuscripts that were a unique record of sub-Saharan...

Islamist insurgents retreating from the ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu have set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 13th century, in what the town's mayor described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage. ... The manuscripts survived for centuries in Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara hidden in wooden trunks, boxes beneath the sand and caves. The majority are written in Arabic, with some in African languages, and one in Hebrew, and cover a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from...

French-led troops surrounded Mali's fabled desert city of Timbuktu on Monday 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...

A week after French aircraft rushed to the aid of a defeated and demoralised Malian army, French ground forces have begun fighting alongside the Malian army in Diabaly, a town 350 km north of capital Bamako. Since last year, northern Mali has been overrun by Islamist rebels organised under the banners of the Ansar Dine, the Movement for Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Last Friday, France sent in jets, helicopter gunships, and special forces to Central Mali as Islamist rebels advanced till 50 km from a major military base in Sevare, and captured...

**SNIP** The catalyst for the Islamic fighters was a military coup nine months ago that transformed Mali from a once-stable nation to the failed state it is today. On March 21, disgruntled soldiers invaded the presidential palace. The fall of the nation's democratically elected government at the hands of junior officers destroyed the military's command-and-control structure, creating the vacuum which allowed a mix of rebel groups to move in. With no clear instructions from their higher-ups, the humiliated soldiers left to defend those towns tore off their uniforms, piled into trucks and beat a retreat as far as Mopti, roughly...

<p>The battle to retake Mali's north from the al-Qaida-linked groups controlling it began in earnest Saturday, after hundreds of French forces deployed to the country and began aerial bombardments to drive back the Islamic extremists from a town seized earlier this week.</p>

A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists. The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and won't be permitted to conduct military operations without specific, additional approval from the secretary of defense. The sharper focus on Africa by the U.S. comes against a backdrop of widespread insurgent violence across North Africa, and as the African Union and other nations discuss military intervention in northern Mali.