Residents of Timbuktu have been speaking of the hardships they have faced during recent weeks and encroaching rebel army attacks.
Tearfund partner TNT, which has been providing food aid to the community, has been hearing testimonies from those who had fled the Malian town due to fears of imminent attack.
It is now reported to be under the control of the Islamic group Ansar Dine, who seized it alongside Tuareg separatists on Sunday.
Local resident Abdolahi Ag Mohamed said he and his family had to leave in a hurry to escape: ‘We left our belongings behind and our home that we had almost finished building, our goats and sheep and our small business.
Sickness
‘We left with just what we could carry in our arms or on our heads. There wasn’t any time to think much or organise ourselves. It was sad and really hard. Our second son cried as he had left his school and his friends, and he kept on and on asking us when he would be back at school.’
Bintou Walat Gosmane Cisse said the rebels had taken medicines from the town’s pharmacy which had left locals in a precarious position: ‘It was impossible to find drugs to look after those who were sick,’ she said.
‘The children didn’t stop coughing, getting diarrhoea and fevers. We were always afraid, and I was especially afraid without my husband. At one point I didn’t know if he was alive or not.’
Another resident, Mohamed Ag Imbonna, described the desperate measures he took to escape the rebels: ‘We dug great holes in the sand which became our houses, where we carried out our cooking and any activity that would make any noise.
‘As soon as we heard a noise, we hid in our holes in silence, and everyone listened until we were sure that it was ok to come out. I have never known such hardship as those days.’
TNT has been forced to suspend food aid operations in Timbuktu due to the instability. It had been helping people affected by dwindling food supplies following drought.
Cath Candish, Tearfund’s Programme Coordinator for Mali, said, ‘The conflict has had a devastating impact, with a worsening of the food crisis, disrupting of markets and supply chains and escalating food prices.
Coup
‘More than 200,000 people have been made homeless due to the fighting, with at least half of these fleeing across the borders to Niger, Algeria, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.'
Last month's military coup in Bamako, the capital of Mali, in which a military captain ousted the democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Toure in protest at his handling of the Tuareg rebellion, has received international condemnation, and resulted in the imposition of sanctions.
In the vacuum created, Tuareg rebels have successfully gained the vast northern territory they have laid claim to for the past 40 years, including Timbuktu.