Summary Happy with French president, the residents are gearing to return saying liberation is near.
MOPTI: Residents of Timbuktu who fled the fabled city after French air raids on Islamists occupying the centuries-old spiritual capital of Muslims in Africa are gearing to return, saying "liberation" is near.
Descending on the central Mali town of Mopti, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Timbuktu, they are overjoyed by the stunning offensive against the Al Qaeda-linked Islamists which has seen six towns recaptured in 17 days.
"We have the feeling that we are soon going to be liberated," said Sidi Toure, a 67-year-old trader, who arrived in this town on the Niger river by boat.
"I live in Timbuktu and I am very happy with French President Francois Hollande," he said.
Timbuktu is a labyrinth of giant earthen mosques and shrines and was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1998. It has long been a tourist magnet and also attracted Islamic scholars, drawn by its rich collection of religious texts.
Mohamed Toure, a 44-year-old driver, said he had no sympathy for the Islamists who plundered, looted, terrorised locals, vandalised and destroyed the shrines of revered Islamic saints and imposed strict sharia, including death stonings and amputations.
"Of course war is not good. But the liberation of the north, is that really war?" he said. "These are people who have been suffering for nine months who are reclaiming their liberty," he said.
The Islamists have been on the run from their bastions, including Timbuktu, after the French air and ground offensive.
French air raids last weekend destroyed their headquarters in the city, a mansion built by Libyan former strongman Moamer Kadhafi, as well as their fuel stocks and armoury.
"They looted and ill-treated people" and "destroyed the mausoleums of saints and amputated the hands of people they accused of stealing," Amadou Alassane Mega said.
"They beat us up when we smoked or listened to music," the 22-year-old student said. "They will have to pay for what they did to us. We will beat them up as well."
A republican guard in Mopti, referred to as the Venice of Mali in tourist guidebooks, said many Islamists had tried to flee to the town, forcing boatmen to take them on their dugouts.
But their reluctant boatmen denounced them later, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A local chief said Mali s former ruler France had made up for its long colonial rule by stopping the Islamists swoop south which threatened the capital Bamako.
"France had a debt to pay and it has now done so," said Amadou Massaya Traore.
