Islamist rebels block aid over role of women

MALI’S Islamist rebel group Ansar Dine – which has links to al-Qaeda – has blocked an aid convoy with tonnes of food and medical supplies for the northern city of Timbuktu, objecting to the presence of women in a reception committee set up for the aid.

The convoy yesterday marked the first aid deployed to Timbuktu since Mali’s government lost control of the vast northern region to separatist and Islamist rebels following a 22 March coup in the capital Bamako.

Tens of thousands have fled Mali’s north since the rebel advance, many of them for neighbouring Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. Those remaining face anarchy and worsening shortages of food and medicine in a zone that is also entering one of the Sahel region’s recurrent droughts.

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“We don’t appreciate that we, as the authority in Timbuktu, were not consulted in organising the reception and distribution of this humantarian convoy,” Sanda Ould Boumana, a spokesman for the Ansar Dine group seeking to impose Islamic sharia law, said.

Among its objections was a plan by Timbuktu residents to hold a welcoming ceremony for the aid convoy that included women. Talks to release the convoy have so far failed.

The convoy, which reached the city gates after a three-day trip from Bamako, was yesterday surrounded by heavily armed Ansar Dine gunmen in pick-up trucks.

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