Armed groups prevent Mali interim govt’s installation in Timbuktu | Reuters

By Tiemoko Diallo | BAMAKO BAMAKO Armed groups surrounded Timbuktu on Monday, the defence ministry said, preventing Malian interim authorities from being installed there under a peace pact meant to end years of lawlessness.The return of state authority to the city was supposed to fill a vacuum that has turned northern Mali into a launch pad for jihadi attacks across the vast region bordering on the Sahara Desert.Banks, schools and shops were shuttered and the city's streets nearly deserted, barring patrols by U.N. peacekeepers, and residents reported sporadic gunfire that had petered out by the afternoon."Armed groups opposed to the interim authorities, which should have been put in place today, are positioned around the city and are threatening to take it over," Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Sidibe said by telephone.He said the arrival of the new authorities had been postponed and negotiations were under way.A Reuters cameraman saw fighters standing on sandbags and wielding rocket launchers at an official checkpoint, their faces wrapped with turbans to protect them against the blowing sand. Most government posts have been unfilled since ethnic Tuareg separatists and desert jihadists took over northern Mali in 2012, before French forces intervened to push them back.

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