History of Timbuktu the city before heading to Bamako and were welcomed by an ecstatic population. The city has been attacked multiple times on several different occasions, once on 21 March 2013 when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives killing a Malian soldier, creating a fierce shoot-out at the international airport killing ten rebels. On 31 March, a group of 20 rebels infiltrated into Timbuktu as civilians and attacked the Malian army base in the city killing three Malian soldiers and injuring dozens more. History of Timbuktu The following is a history of the city of Timbuktu, Mali. Starting out as a seasonal
Timbuktu festival at Anderamboukané. One of these tourists was subsequently murdered. As a result of this and various other incidents a number of states including France, Britain and the US, began advising their citizens to avoid travelling far from Bamako. The number of tourists visiting Timbuktu dropped precipitously from around 6000 in 2009 to only 492 in the first four months of 2011. Because of the security concerns, the Malian government moved the 2010 Festival in the Desert from Essakane to the outskirts of Timbuktu. In November 2011, gunmen attacked tourists staying at a hotel in Timbuktu, killing one of them