ISLAMISTS controlling northern Mali are destroying more Muslim saints' tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, witnesses say, in the latest attack on the world heritage sites considered blasphemous by the jihadists.
"Currently, the Islamists are in the process of destroying the tombs of Kabara," a neighbourhood in the south of the city, a witness said on Thursday, adding there were three ancient tombs in the area.
"They are destroying the first tomb with pickaxes and other tools and saying they are going to destroy all the tombs," he said.
Another resident confirmed the report and said the Islamists, some of them armed, had arrived in the area in three vehicles.
In July, Islamists from Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) - an armed group that controls Timbuktu along with al-Qaeda's North African branch, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - drew condemnation for smashing seven tombs of ancient Muslim saints as well as the "sacred door" to a 15th-century mosque.
Once considered one of Africa's most stable democracies, Mali has descended into chaos since a March coup that overthrew the government of president Amadou Toumani Toure.
A number of Islamist groups including al-Qaeda's north African branch capitalised on the power vacuum to seize the country's vast desert north, an area larger than France.
For more than six months, the Islamists have been imposing their strict version of sharia on areas under their control, arresting unveiled women, stoning an unmarried couple to death, publicly flogging smokers and amputating suspected thieves' limbs, according to residents and rights groups.
Islamists also destroyed tombs in the northern towns of Goundam and Gao in September.
Ansar Dine began their campaign of destruction after UN cultural organisation UNESCO put Timbuktu on its list of endangered world heritage sites.
They have also threatened to destroy the city's three ancient mosques, one of which dates back to 1327.
The latest destruction came after the UN Security Council last week passed a resolution asking West African nations to speed up preparations for an international military intervention to reclaim northern Mali, giving them 45 days to lay out detailed plans.
The Economic Community of West African States has said it has 3000 troops on standby for an intervention in the north.
Politicians from northern Mali called on Thursday for urgent Western military intervention to remove the Islamists.
"There must be an urgent intervention of Western forces," Elhadj Baba Haidara, the head of a group representing elected officials in the north, told journalists in Paris, warning that delays were giving the Islamists time to consolidate their hold on the region.
"They have ways of indoctrinating the population, with fear, with conviction, with force or with money," said Haidara, the elected deputy for Timbuktu.
But plans for an intervention remain divisive in Mali, which is deeply fractured since the coup.
Some 2000 people took to the streets in the Malian capital Bamako on Thursday to protest plans for a foreign intervention.
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