On Wednesday [April 24] the world will mark the 98th anniversary of the genocide carried out against the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. As it does every year, this year, too, Israel will be silent. The Jewish state, which just two weeks ago [April 8] honored the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, will abstain from marking the genocide in which 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians perished. President Shimon Peres, who spoke at the central memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem and pointed a finger at “those who forget and deny the Holocaust,” will continue, as he does every year, to ignore the cruel genocide carried out a quarter of a century before World War II.
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Summary :
On the eve of the 98th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Israel continues denying the event in favor of having better political relations with Turkey, writes Akiva Eldar.
Original Title:
The Politics of Genocide
Author: Akiva Eldar
Translated by: Ruti Sinai
Categories : Originals Israel Turkey
When Adolf Hitler was asked how the world would respond to his “Final Solution” plan — the extermination of the Jewish people in Europe — he replied, without compunction: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Germany speaks today of the annihilation of the Jews, assumes responsibility for the Holocaust, memorializes the victims and compensates the survivors. Turkey not only refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide — its government conducts all-out wars against states that mention the event and punishes governments that grant it official recognition. Only a year and a half ago, Turkey recalled its ambassador from Paris to protest the French parliament’s approval of legislation that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian genocide (several weeks later, the law was repealed).
The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.”
The man who coined the term genocide and fought for adoption of the treaty was the Jewish-Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, whose entire family was annihilated in the Holocaust. He himself managed to flee to the United States. Lemkin referred specifically to the Armenian annihilation as an act of genocide. This position was never adopted by Israeli governments. The official Israeli position was summed up in 2001 in an interview by then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres with the Turkish Daily News: “The Armenians suffered a tragedy,” he said, “but not genocide.”
In advance of the Armenian memorial day someone should point out to the president a compilation of testimony provided by members of Nili (a Jewish spy ring that operated in Palestine during World War I in an effort to help the British army wrest it from the Turks) about what befell the Armenians. He might just change his mind.
This is the testimony of Eitan Belkind, a Nili man who infiltrated the Turkish military:
“I was amazed to see the river colored red with the blood and bodies of decapitated children floating on the water. The sight was horrendous — and we are powerless to help.” Belkind later described how Circassian soldiers ordered the Armenians to gather thorns and thistles and form them into a large pyramid, tied some 5,000 people to each other hand to hand in a ring around the thorn pile and set it on fire. “The fire rose to the sky along with the screams of the wretched people charred to death in the bonfire,” he wrote. “I fled from the place because I could not watch that horrible scene. I urged my horse to gallop with all his might and after a wild two-hour ride I could still hear their miserable cries until their voices died out. Two days later I went back to the place and saw the charred bodies of thousands of human beings.”
In a memorandum submitted to the British Ministry of Defense in 1916, Nili leader Aaron Aaronsohn wrote: “The massacre of the Armenians is a well-planned Turkish action and the Germans were partners in this shameful act.”
These harsh words were echoed at a seminar held on April 11 of this year on the subject of “The Nakba in Israel’s National Memory” (by The Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence through Education and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University). During the discussion, Professor Yair Auron of the Open University, who for years has been leading a determined struggle for recognition of the Armenian genocide, was sharply critical of the indifference of Israel’s political and academic elite to the tragedies of other nations. Later, in an interview with Al-Monitor, Auron contended that through their indifference, “they are defiling the memory of the Holocaust.”
And, in fact, other than a handful of right- and left-wing politicians, none of the leaders of mainstream Israeli politics showed up. For them, any attempt to hint that other peoples were also persecuted and massacred for racist reasons is considered “disrespect for the Holocaust” (they themselves, on the other hand, often use the term “Holocaust,” especially to scare the Israeli public with the Iranian threat). They do not define the Armenian genocide as a human-Jewish-ethical issue. Israeli universities make do with teaching the Jewish Holocaust and evince no interest in the disasters of other peoples. Nonetheless, at Auron’s instigation, the Open University has for several years been teaching a course on the Armenian genocide, which is much in demand by students.
The recognition of the Armenian genocide by Israeli decision-makers is a question of politics, of the relationship between Israel, Turkey and the United States. Who cares about relations with little Armenia (3 million citizens)? In fact, Israel even earned several million dollars recently, benefiting from the Turkish government’s decision to cancel a weapons deal with France in retaliation for the above-mentioned legislation against denial of the Armenian genocide.
In 2007, the Knesset decided to remove from its daily agenda a proposal by Knesset Member Haim Oron of the Meretz Party to debate the Armenian genocide in the Education and Culture Committee. The decision resulted from orders by then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who feared that further discussion of the issue would lead to a diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey.
In a debate that took place in the Knesset five years later (June 12, 2012), over the objections of the diplomatic echelon, the government’s representative, then Minister of Environmental Protection Gilad Erdan, confessed that “this whole debate is taking place against the backdrop of relations between Israel and Turkey.” Nothing has changed.
At the low point of relations with Turkey, following the failed May 2010 Israeli takeover of the flotilla to Gaza which gave birth to the “Marmara Crisis,” some right-wing politicians suggested “punishing” the Turks by recognizing the Armenian genocide. And what would we have done now? Would Prime Minister Netanyahu have repealed the recognition of the Armenian genocide to complement his apology to Turkey over the Marmara? Hearing of that idea, Auron reacts with anger: “As a human being and as a Jew, I am deeply ashamed that an issue of such basic principle and ethics has been turned into a pawn.”
The office of President Peres did not respond to a query by Al-Monitor, asking whether he had changed his mind regarding the genocide of the Armenian people.
Akiva Eldar is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse. He was formerly a senior columnist and editorial writer for Haaretz and also served as the Hebrew daily’s US bureau chief and diplomatic correspondent. His most recent book (with Idith Zertal), Lords of the Land, on the Jewish settlements, was on the best-seller list in Israel and has been translated into English, German and Arabic.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/the-politics-behind-the-armenian-genocide.html#ixzz2RQozJg41

The world can be a dark and scary place sometimes, but this video of spectators bursting into song after New Zealand legalized gay marriage has restored our faith in humanity (at least for today).

On Wednesday, New Zealand’s Parliament voted to legalize same-sex marriage in a 77 to 44 vote. As lawmakers applauded the final vote, spectators crowded into the public galleries above burst into song, serenading the bill’s sponsor, lesbian MP Louisa Wall.

The Associated Press reports the song was “Pokarekare Ana,” a love song in the country’s indigenous Maori language.

As Towleroad notes, “This is what equality sounds like.”

We challenge you to watch, and not tear up. Go on, try.

Dozens of people, including police officers have been injured in unrest in Bahrain, on the second anniversary of a Saudi-led intervention in the gulf island state.

The Bahraini interior ministry reported that “domestic terrorists” had blocked roads and burnt cars.

The main opposition group, al-Wefaq, said that at least 35 protesters had been hurt, three of them critically.

The interior ministry reported two police officers injured.

Some of Thursday’s worst violence occurred in the towns of Sitra and Sanabis on the outskirts of Manama.

Cars were set ablaze and a major highway was temporarily blocked by protesters.

Witnesses reported heavy clashes as police used tear gas and stun grenades against youth armed according to the Interior ministry with “Molotov cocktails, iron rods and a number of homemade bombs.”

Saudi Arabia led a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) force down a causeway that links the two countries on 14 March 2011.

The military intervention was intended to restore order after pro-democracy activists had peacefully taken control of an iconic landmark, Pearl Roundabout, in the capital Manama.

Saudi troops took up positions at key installations while police and the Bahrain Defense Force cleared the roundabout using force.

In the wake of the clearance more than 30 people died, hundreds were injured and thousands arrested. Several thousand more were dismissed from their jobs. The vast majority were Shia Muslim.

‘Growing frustration’Bahrain has a Shia Muslim majority but is governed by a Sunni royal family. Shia Bahrainis have long complained of discrimination, poor housing and high unemployment.

The extent to which Shia were targeted by the government and its security forces after Pearl Roundabout was cleared served to fuel resentment.

As protests both peaceful and violent continued, King Hamad commissioned an independent enquiry. It found that police had used excessive force in subduing dissent. The King accepted the findings in November 2011 and promised change but demonstrations against the government have continued.

Opposition groups, led by al-Wefaq, have repeatedly called for all protest to be peaceful. But they say that the government is not committed to serious reform and is continuing to drag its feet.

That, says the opposition, is causing growing frustration as young masked Bahrainis take to the streets on a near nightly basis, many of them armed with Molotov cocktails. They routinely block roads with burning tyres, breeze blocks and rubbish bins.

The police have responded with tear gas, birdshot and stun grenades, coming under attack as they attempt to clear the barricades.

By Chris Hedges

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—I flew to Kansas City last week to see Tomas Young. Young was paralyzed in Iraq in 2004. He is now receiving hospice care at his home. I knew him by reputation and the movie documentary “Body of War.” He was one of the first veterans to publicly oppose the war in Iraq. He fought as long and as hard as he could against the war that crippled him, until his physical deterioration caught up with him.

“I had been toying with the idea of suicide for a long time because I had become helpless,” he told me in his small house on the Kansas City outskirts where he intends to die. “I couldn’t dress myself. People have to help me with the most rudimentary of things. I decided I did not want to go through life like that anymore. The pain, the frustration. …”

He stopped abruptly and called his wife. “Claudia, can I get some water?” She opened a bottle of water, took a swig so it would not spill when he sipped and handed it to him.

“I felt at the end of my rope,” the 33-year-old Army veteran went on. “I made the decision to go on hospice care, to stop feeding and fade away. This way, instead of committing the conventional suicide and I am out of the picture, people have a way to stop by or call and say their goodbyes. I felt this was a fairer way to treat people than to just go out with a note. After the anoxic brain injury in 2008 [a complication that Young suffered] I lost a lot of dexterity and strength in my upper body. So I wouldn’t be able to shoot myself or even open the pill bottle to give myself an overdose. The only way I could think of doing it was to have Claudia open the pill bottle for me, but I didn’t want her implicated.”

“After you made that decision how did you feel?” I asked.

“I felt relieved,” he answered. “I finally saw an end to this four-and-a-half-year fight. If I were in the same condition I was in during the filming of ‘Body of War,’ in a manual chair, able to feed and dress myself and transfer from my bed to the wheelchair, you and I would not be having this discussion. I can’t even watch the movie anymore because it makes me sad to see how I was, compared to how I am. … Viewing the deterioration, I decided it was best to go out now rather than regress more.”

Young will die for our sins. He will die for a war that should never have been fought. He will die for the lies of politicians. He will die for war profiteers. He will die for the careers of generals. He will die for a cheerleader press. He will die for a complacent public that made war possible. He bore all this upon his body. He was crucified. And there are hundreds of thousands of other crucified bodies like his in Baghdad and Kandahar and Peshawar and Walter Reed medical center. Mangled bodies and corpses, broken dreams, unending grief, betrayal, corporate profit, these are the true products of war. Tomas Young is the face of war they do not want you to see.

On April 4, 2004, Young was crammed into the back of a two-and-a-half-ton Army truck with 20 other soldiers in Sadr City, Iraq. Insurgents opened fire on the truck from above. “It was like shooting ducks in a barrel,” he said. A bullet from an AK-47 severed his spinal column. A second bullet shattered his knee. At first he did not know he had been shot. He felt woozy. He tried to pick up his M16. He couldn’t lift his rifle from the truck bed. That was when he knew something was terribly wrong.

“I tried to say ‘I’m going to be paralyzed, someone shoot me right now,’ but there was only a hoarse whisper that came out because my lungs had collapsed,” he said. “I knew the damage. I wanted to be taken out of my misery.”

His squad leader, Staff Sgt. Robert Miltenberger, bent over and told him he would be all right. A few years later Young would see a clip of Miltenberger weeping as he recounted the story of how he had lied to Young.

“I tried to contact him,” said Young, whose long red hair and flowing beard make him look like a biblical prophet. “I can’t find him. I want to tell him it is OK.”

Young had been in Iraq five days. It was his first deployment. After being wounded he was sent to an Army hospital in Kuwait, and although his legs, now useless, lay straight in front of him he felt as if he was still sitting cross-legged on the floor of the truck. That sensation lasted for about three weeks. It was an odd and painful initiation into his life as a paraplegic. His body, from then on, would play tricks on him.

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Security forces in the Yemeni city of Aden have fired on protesters calling for southern independence, killing at least four and wounding many others.

The demonstrations in the southern port city came on the first anniversary of the uncontested election of President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi.

Supporters of the president are holding a rival protest in the city.

Amnesty International has urged the authorities to end what it calls the routine violent repression of protests.

“The Yemeni authorities must end the routine violent repression of freedom of assembly,” the human rights group said.

“The Southern Movement and its followers have a right to protest peacefully, and the Yemeni authorities must allow them this right.’

Dozens of protesters were wounded 10 days ago when rival rallies clashed and security forces opened fire.

City paralysedIn Thursday’s unrest, security officials said two policemen were wounded by snipers overlooking the main southern separatist protest, the AFP news agency reported.

Nearly 30 separatist protesters were wounded on Thursday in Aden.

The city was paralysed as security forces deployed heavily around to try to keep rival rallies apart, AFP reported.

Pro-government supporters, mostly form the Islamist al-Islah waved Yemeni flags and carried portraits of the president.

Separatist protesters chanted “Revolution in the south, occupiers go out.”

Calls from the south for independence are not new. South Yemen was a former British colony and later a socialist secular state and was not united with the North till 1990.

Many in the south feel they have been disenfranchised for decades.

After the pro-democracy uprising they have had more space to protest.

Publisher, The California Courier

Pres. Serzh Sargsyan’s comments generated much controversy last week when he reportedly stated at a campaign stop in Yerevan on Feb. 5 that ‘tseghasbanoutyoun’ (genocide) and ‘yeghern’ (atrocity) are synonymous. He asserted that Pres. Obama, without uttering the word ‘genocide,’ had said “everything.” The Armenian head of state was referring to Pres. Obama’s use of the term ‘Meds Yeghern’ (Great Atrocity) rather than ‘Armenian Genocide’ in his annual April 24 commemorative statements.

The words Yeghern or Meds Yeghern were used by Armenians mostly before Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1943 to describe the organized mass killings of Armenians during the 1915-23 period. Before 1943, Armenians used various expressions to refer to those killings, such as ‘chart’ (massacre), meds vojir (great crime), ‘aghed’ (disaster), ‘deghahanoutyoun’ (deportation), and ‘aksor’ (exile). However, none of these words have the legal connotation of tseghasbanoutyoun or genocide under international law.

Since 1943, Armenians have spent much time and effort to convince the world that they were the victims of genocide and are now seeking justice from Turkey under international law. This is fundamental reason why Armenians demand genocide recognition, not massacres, atrocities or deportations!

The only reason Pres. Obama has used the term Meds Yeghern in his annual statements is to avoid the words Armenian Genocide, in acquiescence to Turkish pressures. If Meds Yeghern and genocide have the same meaning, why doesn’t Pres. Obama use the term genocide instead of Meds Yeghern? After all, presidential candidate Obama did not promise Armenian-American voters that if elected he would recognize the Meds Yeghern; he pledged to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Thus, all who allege that Meds Yeghern and genocide are synonymous are simply giving Pres. Obama a free pass and allowing him not to keep his solemn pledge. They are also undermining several decades of extensive lobbying efforts for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide!

Those who claim equivalence between Meds Yeghern and genocide do it not out of ignorance in Armenian terminology. They know full well that the two words don’t have the same meaning. Their real reason is to declare victory by making people believe that the President of the United States did after all acknowledge the validity of the Armenian Genocide.

There are a couple of fallacies in this approach. First, regardless of what Meds Yeghern means to Armenians, it is a meaningless term to all those who do not speak Armenian. Second, equating Meds Yeghern and genocide in order to claim success on genocide recognition is a futile exercise. It is really unnecessary to twist the meaning of Pres. Obama’s words. The United States recognized the Armenian Genocide as far back as 1951, when the US government submitted an official document to the International Court of Justice (World Court), acknowledging the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as examples of genocide. Another US President, Ronald Reagan, issued a Presidential Proclamation on April 22, 1981, where he mentioned the Armenian Genocide. Moreover, the House of Representatives acknowledged the Armenian Genocide by adopting two resolutions in 1975 and 1984.

Consequently, there is no longer a pressing need to pursue further acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide by passing repeated congressional resolutions or demanding that Pres. Obama utter the words Armenian Genocide. Nor is there a need to reinterpret Pres. Obama’s statements, claiming that by using the term Meds Yeghernhe has automatically acknowledged the Armenian Genocide. The only reason Pres. Obama should recognize the Armenian Genocide is to be a man of his word!

It is imperative for Armenians and their supporters to concentrate their efforts on the eve of the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide not on gaining further recognition — an already accomplished fact — but on securing justice for the massive crimes committed against their ancestors a hundred years ago.

Rather than demanding that the United States or even Turkey acknowledge the Genocide, which would not result in any concrete benefit, Armenians should focus their energies on more meaningful steps such as filing lawsuits against the Turkish government in national and international courts.

Once Armenians regain their territories and properties from Turkey through legal action or as a result of unexpected geopolitical developments, the Turkish government can go on denying the Genocide as long as it wants!

A bipartisan Senate plan unveiled Monday to overhaul the U.S. immigration system frames a pitched debate expected in Congress around the areas of border enforcement, a path to citizenship for those already in the country and the future flow of new arrivals.

The brief outline includes a call to expedite citizenship for young people brought here as children, and a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States — the issue certain to stir the greatest political fight.

Notably, the plan nods to conservatives’ preference for stricter enforcement efforts by requiring that America’s borders be secured before existing illegal immigrants can seek legal status.

“We have a long way to go, but this bipartisan blueprint is a major breakthrough,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference attended by five of the eight senators who are crafting the plan.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the signatories, pledged that the process wouldn’t repeat “the mistakes of 1986,” when he said an amnesty program legalized millions of immigrants but set conditions for the illegal arrivals of millions more.

The announcement came on the eve of a Tuesday speech on immigration by President Obama in Las Vegas, where the president is expected to lay out his own principles, which align with the senators’ framework. Obama advisers have signaled that he could offer more details in his State of the Union address on Feb. 12.

Members of the “group of eight” senators — four Democrats and four Republicans — said they hope to complete a draft of the legislation by March and send it to the full Senate for a vote by late spring or summer.

Groups on both sides of the debate already have begun to mobilize campaigns to apply pressure on lawmakers over the coming months.

“The public is overwhelmingly on our side and on our president’s side,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, told reporters Monday in a conference call with civil rights and pro-immigrant groups in support of the plan. “We think it’s important for both parties to take leadership at this incredible moment. And we don’t want some piecemeal solution. Reform must include a path to citizenship.”

Opponents quickly criticized the plan as an amnesty program and a retread of the last overhaul bill, which failed in 2007.

Some conservatives also dismissed the provision in the new plan that would prioritize securing the borders over granting legal status. They say it mandates tracking people exiting the country by air and sea, but not by land.

“There were good reasons that [2007] bill failed, and I think that it will apply to this bill, as well,” said Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, which advocates greater enforcement measures and a reduced flow of immigration. “The enforcement mechanisms are fairly meaningless and actually weakened current law.”

The plan was backed by Republicans McCain, Marco Rubio of Florida, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona; and Democrats Schumer, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Michael Bennet of Colorado.

The senators’ plan reflects growing agreement in both parties that any legislation must accomplish several goals, including normalizing the status of existing illegal immigrants, strengthening border enforcement, requiring verification of workers’ immigration status, and increasing visas for temporary agriculture workers and those working in the fields of science and technology.

Immigration analyst Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute says the political environment in Washington “has never been more favorable for comprehensive immigration reform. The issue is whether there is enough political space between now and the end of the year for the mechanics of the legislation to go through.”

A large and growing Hispanic population voted overwhelmingly for Obama over Republican Mitt Romney in November, and many Republican leaders have said addressing immigration law is key to beginning to capture some of those voters.

But there are several potentially deal-breaking questions unlikely to be answered right away.

The biggest is whether existing illegal immigrants would receive legal status or a path to citizenship, an issue Chishti calls “the big elephant in the room.”

The White House’s statement said “any legislation must include a path to earned citizenship.” And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently drew a line on the matter, saying no legislation would pass his chamber without the provision.

Most Republicans in both chambers have declined to go as far with their support. A number of Republican senators had lined up behind an earlier blueprint offered by Rubio that favored normalizing illegal immigrants without expressly providing a citizenship path.

But on Monday, Rubio, a Cuban-American senator and potential leader on the issue in the GOP, joined the seven other senators in the bipartisan call for a “tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.”

The other matter is whether the reforms will be packaged in a single bill, as Obama and Democrats prefer, or divided in separate pieces of legislation as favored by many Republicans.

The Republicans’ position was undercut by Jeb Bush, the Republican former governor of Florida, who argued in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal for a single comprehensive bill.

Obama on Friday met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which is expected to play a key role in the debate. The caucus, which is made up of House and Senate Democrats, had for weeks urged the White House to take a leading role.

Hispanic lawmakers have issued their own policy priorities, most of which align with Obama’s and those of conservative lawmakers. They include requiring illegal immigrants to register with the federal government, undergo a criminal background check, learn English and pay taxes as conditions for obtaining legal status and eventual citizenship.

The bigger fight may come in the House, which would have to take up a Senate bill or draft its own version before the two chambers could reach a compromise in conference. Unlike the Democratic-led Senate, the House is controlled by Republicans, who have installed immigration hawks on the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, which would handle related legislation.

French-led troops in Mali have entered the historic city of Timbuktu encountering little resistance, French and Malian military sources say.But there are reports of thousands of ancient manuscripts being destroyed, with video footage of the library showing charred books and empty boxes.

French President Francois Hollande declared that the joint forces were “winning this battle”.

They have been pushing north in their offensive against Islamist rebels.

Troops were greeted by Timbuktu residents - this one shows his appreciation for France’s president

They seized Gao, northern Mali’s biggest city, on Saturday.

Islamists seized the north of the country last year, but have been losing ground since French forces launched an operation earlier this month.

Most militants appear to have moved out to desert hideouts, says the BBC’s Thomas Fessy in the capital, Bamako.

The advance came as African Union (AU) leaders met for a summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, the key issue at which was Mali.

The AU decided to contribute $50m (£32m) to the multinational force, in what the BBC’s James Copnall says is an attempt to start the ball rolling for what promises to be a costly operation.

Library ‘emptied’On Monday afternoon, a French military spokesman said troops had moved into Timbuktu.

They were met by cheering crowds as they entered, waving French and Malian flags and shouting “Mali, Mali, Mali!”.

“We are proud of France and proud of Mali. We thank you a thousand times,” one resident said.

“We are independent again! We were held hostage for 10 months but it seemed like 10 years,” AFP news agency quoted resident Hama Cisse as saying.

Meanwhile, a Malian army colonel told the agency: “The Malian army and the French army are in complete control of the city of Timbuktu.”

Soldiers were now patrolling the town to carry out clean-up operations, fearing Islamist elements may still be hiding within the population, the French military said.

Reports have emerged that militants had destroyed a library of ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 13th Century.

Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford, who is with the joint forces,showed some charred documents and piles of empty boxes at the library said to have contained the manuscripts, and said vaults beneath the building had been emptied.

The library, the Ahmed Baba institute, held about 30,000 manuscripts, and includes documents about centuries of life in the city, Mali and neighbouring countries.

‘Strategy of evasion’French army spokesman Col Thierry Burkhard had told the BBC earlier that “substantial airpower” had been used to support about 1,000 French and 200 Malian forces in their offensive against militants in Timbuktu.

He said French forces had taken access points to the city during the night.

Once Timbuktu is secured, the French-led troops are expected to focus on the last rebel stronghold, Kidal, near the border with Algeria.

Continue reading the main story

Treasures of Timbuktu

• Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th Centuries
• 700,000 manuscripts survive in public libraries and private collections
• Books on religion, law, literature and science
• Added to Unesco world heritage list in 1988 for its three mosques and 16 cemeteries and mausoleums
• They played a major role in spreading Islam in West Africa; the oldest dates from 1329
• Islamists destroyed mausoleums after seizing the city

• Why do we know Timbuktu?
• Timbuktu’s manuscripts
• Timbuktu artefacts in pictures

But reports from the city - which is the home of the head of Ansar Dine, the main militant group in northern Mali - suggest that the group may have lost control there as well.

The secular Tuareg rebel group, MNLA, said it had taken charge. AFP quoted a spokesman of an Ansar Dine breakaway faction as saying that it was jointly “ensuring security” with the MNLA.

Once Kidal is taken, the first phase of the French operation will be over, our correspondent says.

The second phase will be to track down the militants to their desert hideouts, which could prove a much more difficult task, he adds.

Mr Fabius warned that the militants had adopted a “strategy of evasion and some of them could return in the north”.

President Hollande later outlined plans for the operation, saying African troops would take over once French forces had retaken key towns.

The French would then return to their bases, and from then on their sole task would be to support and train Malian forces, he added.

“Just as we went into action rapidly, we will draw back to the starting points,” he said.

French officials said they now had 2,900 troops in Mali, backed by 2,700 African forces in Mali and neighbouring Chad.

The African contingent is expected to be bolstered to 7,900, including 2,200 troops promised by Chad, AP news agency quotes a Nigerian military official, Col Shehu Usman Abdulkadir, as saying.