A renowned extremist leader and his fighters on Monday seized control of Timbuktu and chased out the Tuareg rebels with whom they captured Mali's fabled city a day earlier, witnesses said.
"Iyad (Ag Ghaly) came this morning with about 50 cars. They took the city, chased away the people from MNLA (Azawad National Liberation Movement) who were there, burned the MNLA flag and put their own flag up at the military camp," said cameraman Moussa Haidara who filmed events.
This was confirmed by several residents of the town.
"This Monday, Iyad Ag Ghaly came to Timbuktu with his men to expel the MNLA," said a hotel owner, speaking on condition of anonymity and referring to the main Tuareg rebel group that relaunched a rebellion in January.
"He came to the hospital to ask the nurses to work, to take care of people, afterwards he told the population not to be afraid, that they are there for Islam, not for independence or to hurt anyone."
Ag Ghaly's movement Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith, in Arabic) and the MNLA have been fighting alongside each other over the past weeks and on Sunday stormed into Timbuktu together.
Though they have been fighting side by side over the past several months, the two groups have very different objectives.
The MNLA seeks the independence of northern Mali which it considers the Tuareg homeland that it calls Azawad, while Ansar Dine wants to implement Sharia law in the mostly Muslim, but secular state.
Ag Ghaly was the leader of a Tuareg rebellion between 1990-1995 and became a key power broker in negotiations between government and Tuareg fighters in a 2007-9 rebellion.
President Amadou Toumani Toure, who was deposed by renegade soldiers on March 22, had even sent the ex-rebel as an envoy to the Malian consulate in Saudia Arabia.
He has since taken up the Islamist cause and has distanced himself from the Tuareg national struggle, though details of why remain murky. He announced the formation of Ansar Dine in March.
The cameraman Haidara said among the Ansar Dine fighters were Somalians, Nigeriens and Tunisians.
The MNLA on January 17 announced it was launching a fresh offensive for independence and a few weeks later it emerged that Ansar Dine had also become involved in the fighting.
The two groups have claimed a series of military victories in the cities of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu which effectively puts them in control of the northern triangle of the bow-tie shaped nation.