Timbuktu and kidnapping three others. This was the first terrorist incident in Timbuktu itself. On 1 April 2012, one day after the capture of Gao, Timbuktu was captured from the Malian military by the Tuareg rebels of the MNLA and Ansar Dine. Five days later, the MNLA declared the region independent of Mali as the nation of Azawad. The declared political entity was not recognized by any regional nations or the international community and it collapsed three months later on 12 July. On 28 January 2013, French and Malian government troops began retaking Timbuktu from the Islamist rebels. The force of
Fall of Timbuktu (2012) — there is lots of internal and external evidence of this. But Ansar Dine is ignorant of this. For them, there is only one book and it's the Quran. All this other (Islamic) learning is inconsequential to them." The Chairman of the Malian Manuscript Foundation Michael Covitt, said from New York that the action led to "generations and generations of culture being destroyed." However, early estimates of the extent of the destruction were overstated. Timbuktu residents successfully saved more than 300,000 manuscripts by hiding or smuggling them out of Timbuktu. No more than 4,000 documents were lost or damaged when