Al-Qaida linked fighters destroy 'end of the world' gate in Timbuktu

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World cultural body UNESCO was set to create a special fund to protect Mali's heritage on Tuesday after al-Qaida-linked Islamists attacked historic and religious landmarks in the city of Timbuktu for a third day, breaking down the door to a 15th century mosque that -- according to legend --had to remain shut until the end of the world.

A UNESCO committee also called for a mission to go to Mali to work with local and national leaders to stop what it called "wanton destruction."

"In legend, it is said that the main gate of Sidi Yahya mosque will not be opened until the last day (of the world)," Alpha Abdoulahi, the town imam, told Reuters by telephone.

Yet Islamists intent on erasing traces of what some regard as un-Islamic idolatry smashed down the door to the mosque early on Monday, saying they wanted to "destroy the mystery" of the ancient entrance, he said.

"They offered me 50,000 CFA ($100) for repairs but I refused to take the money, saying that what they did is irreparable," Abdoulahi added.

In a statement emailed to msnbc.com Tuesday, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee called for a series of measures to help save Mali's ancient sites and condemned the "repugnant" destruction of Timbuktu's mausoleums.

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has appealed for a halt to the attacks.

Ansar Dine and well-armed allies, including al-Qaida splinter group MUJWA, have hijacked a separatist uprising by local Tuareg MNLA rebels and now control two-thirds of Mali's desert north, territory that includes the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.


The size of the area under their control is bigger than France, heightening fearsthat Mali will become a jihadist haven.

The MNLA rebels criticized the Islamists' destruction of holy sites, underlining a growing rift between the two groups that had formed an uneasy alliance to take over the north of the country.

"The perpetrators of these heinous acts,their sponsors, and those who support them must be made accountable," MNLA spokesman Hama Ag Mahmoud told Reuters in an interview in Nouakchott.

Desert tourism Sufi shrines have been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year. The attacks also recall the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two 6th-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

According to Time magazine, those who adhere to a more orthodox brand of Islam tend to harbor a particular animosity to Sufism, who have a more mystical interpretation of the divine and a faith that is often rooted in pre-Islamic traditions and a reverence for saints and dead wise men.

Located on an old Saharan trading route that saw salt from the Arab north exchangedfor gold and slaves from black Africa to the south, Timbuktu blossomed in the 16th century as an Islamic seat of learning, home to priests, scribes and jurists.

In recent years, Mali had sought to create a desert tourism industry around Timbuktu. But even before April's rebellion many tourists were being discouraged by a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in the region claimed by al-Qaida-linked groups.