Rebels leave Timbuktu a 'ghost town'

RADICAL Islamists have left Timbuktu in northern Mali, turning it into a ‘‘ghost town’’ with no electricity or drinking water for three days, residents and officials say...

A regional security source said the Islamists were ‘‘regrouping in the region of Kidal’’, in Mali’s far north-east.

The Islamists kept the electricity and water running with generators but their departure left a vacuum, especially as their fuel stocks had been destroyed in French air raids.

French planes on Sunday night bombed a major base of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) near Timbuktu, destroying a mansion belonging to Libya’s slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi which was being used by Islamist radicals as their headquarters.

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