Islamist guerrillas inflicted greater damage than first thought on the Muslim shrines and artefacts decimated when they controlled northern Mali, the United Nations said Friday.
A UN mission to northern Mali came away shocked at the extent of the destruction by the Al Qaeda-linked militants, said Lazare Eloundou Assomo of the UN Educational Cultural Organization (UNESCO), who led the mission.
"The destruction caused to Timbuktu's heritage is even more alarming than we thought," Assomo told UN reporters in a videoconference from Bamako.
"We discovered that 15 of Timbuktu's mausoleums -- and not 11 as first thought -- were destroyed, including nine that are part of UNESCO World Heritage sites.
"We estimate that about 4,200 manuscripts from the Ahmed Baba research centre were burned, and that another 300,000 in the Timbuktu region are vulnerable to illicit trafficking," Assomo added.
The Islamists controlled Timbuktu and other ancient cities when they occupied northern Mali for 10 months up to January when France launched a military intervention.
Timbuktu, which was the intellectual and spiritual capital of Islam in Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries, is renowned for its collection of manuscripts, some of which date back to the pre-Islamic era.
The UN cultural body has launched a multi-million dollar campaign to rebuild shrines and restore some of the manuscripts.
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