French and Malian soldiers have won control of the desert city of Timbuktu following the retreat of Islamist extremists,

French and Malian troops retook control of Timbuktu, a Unesco World Heritage site, yesterday after Islamist rebel occupiers fled the ancient Sahara trading town and torched several buildings, including a priceless manuscript library.

France has claimed that al-Qaida-linked extremists have been defeated in the key city of Gao in north-eastern Mali.

One wing of Mali’s Ansar Dine rebel group has split off to create its own movement, saying that they want to negotiate a solution to the crisis in Mali.

French fighter jets pounded Islamist rebel strongholds deep in northern Mali yesterday as Paris poured more troops into the capital Bamako, awaiting a West African force to dislodge al Qaeda-linked insurgents from the country’s north.

Rebels who seized control of Mali’s remote north effectively partitioning the country in two have announced a ceasefire, saying they had reached their military goal.

The junior officer who overthrew Mali’s democratically elected leader last month and dissolved the nation’s constitution has made a public U-turn, declaring amid enormous international pressure that he is reinstating the 1992 constitution and planning to hold elections.

After seizing the strategic northern Mali towns of Kidal and Gao, Tuareg rebels today began besieging the ancient city of Timbuktu, taking their fight for a homeland for the nomadic people to the last major government holdout in the north.

Rebels today attacked Mali’s strategic northern city of Gao, a day after they took the provincial capital of Kidal, witnesses and an official said.

The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to lift the no-fly zone over Libya on October 31 and end its authorisation of military action to protect civilians.

MORE than one million people in Mali are facing a major food crisis after rich countries failed to respond to a call for emergency funds, Oxfam said yesterday.