French seal off Mali's Timbuktu, rebels torch library

GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops on Monday sealed off Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, after fleeing Islamist rebel fighters torched several buildings in the ancient Saharan trading town, including a priceless manuscript library.

Without a shot being fired to stop them, 1,000 French soldiers including paratroopers and 200 Malian troops seized the airport and surrounded the centuries-old Niger River city, looking to block the escape of al Qaeda-allied fighters.

The retaking of Timbuktu followed the swift capture by French and Malian forces at the weekend of Gao, another major northern Malian town which had also been occupied by the alliance of Islamist militant groups since last year.

A two-week intervention by France in its former Sahel colony, at the request of Mali's government but also with wide international backing, has driven the Islamist rebel fighters northwards out of towns into the desert and mountains.

A French military spokesman said the assault forces at Timbuktu were being careful to avoid combat inside the city so as not to damage cultural treasures and mosques and religious shrines in what is considered a seat of Islamic learning.

But Timbuktu's mayor, Ousmane Halle, reported that fleeing Islamist fighters had torched a South African-funded library in the city containing thousands of priceless manuscripts.

"The rebels set fire to the newly-constructed Ahmed Baba Institute built by the South Africans ... this happened four days ago," Halle Ousmane told Reuters by telephone from Bamako. He said he had received the information from his chief of communications who had travelled south from the city a day ago.

Ousmane was not able to immediately say how much the concrete building had been damaged. He added the rebels also torched his office and the home of a member of parliament.

The Ahmed Baba Institute, one of several libraries and collections in the city containing fragile ancient documents dating back to the 13th century, is named after a Timbuktu-born contemporary of William Shakespeare and houses more than 20,000 scholarly manuscripts. Some were stored in underground vaults.

The French and Malians have faced no resistance so far at Timbuktu, but they face a tough job of combing through the labyrinth of ancient mosques and monuments and mud-brick homes between alleys to flush out any hiding Islamist fighters.

"We have to be extremely careful. But in general terms, the necessary elements are in place to take control," French army spokesman Lieutenant Thierry Burkhard said in Paris.

Timbuktu member of parliament El Hadj Baba Haïdara told Reuters in Bamako the Islamist rebels had abandoned the city. "They all fled. Before their departure they destroyed some buildings, including private homes," he said.

The United States and European Union are backing the French-led Mali operation as a strike against the threat of radical Islamist jihadists using the West African state's inhospitable Sahara desert as a launch pad for international attacks.

They are helping with intelligence, airlift of troops, refueling of planes and logistics, but do not plan to send combat troops to Mali.

FRANCE: MALI "BEING LIBERATED"

"Little by little, Mali is being liberated," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France 2 television.

At Gao, more than 300 km (190 miles) east of Timbuktu, jubilant residents danced to music in the streets on Sunday to celebrate the liberation of this other ancient Niger River town from the sharia-observing rebels.

A third northern town, the Tuareg seat of Kidal, in Mali's rugged and remote northeast, remains in the hands of the Islamist fighters, a loose alliance that groups AQIM with Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine and AQIM splinter MUJWA.

With its cultural treasures, Timbuktu had previously been a destination for adventurous tourists and international scholars.

The world was shocked by its capture on April 1 by Tuareg desert fighters whose separatist rebellion was later hijacked by Islamist radicals who imposed severe sharia law.

Provoking international outrage, the Islamist militants who follow a more conservative Salafist branch of Islam destroyed dozens of ancient shrines in Timbuktu sacred to moderate Sufi Moslems, condemning them as idolatrous and un-Islamic.

They also applied amputations for thieves and stoning of adulterers under sharia, while forcing women to go veiled.

On Sunday, many women among the thousands of Gao residents who came out to celebrate the rebels' expulsion made a point of going unveiled. Other residents smoked cigarettes and played music to flout the bans previously set by the Islamist rebels.

"THREAT OF TERRORISM"

As the French and Malian troops push into northern Mali, African troops from a U.N.-backed continental intervention force expected to number 7,700 are being flown into the country, despite severe delays due to logistical problems.

Outgoing African Union Chairman President Thomas Boni Yayi of Benin at the weekend scolded AU states for their slow response to assist Mali while former colonial power France took the lead in the military operation.

Yayi put the cost of the African intervention force, now revised upwards, at $1 billion and said up to 10 African countries may be required to send troops.

Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Niger and Chad are providing soldiers. Burundi and other nations have pledged to contribute.

The AU is expected to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in logistical support and funding for the African Mali force at a conference of donors to be held in Addis Ababa on Tuesday.

Yayi also urged other NATO members and Asian countries to follow France's lead and send troops to Mali. "We have to free the Sahel belt from the threat of terrorism," he said.

(Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis in Sevare, Mali, Bate Felix in Dakar, Alexandria Sage and Emmanuel Jarry in Paris, Tiemoko Diallo in Bamako, Richard Lough and Aaron Masho in Addis Ababa; Writing by Pascal Fletcher)

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Militants attack oil pipeline in Algeria, two dead

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants attacked an oil pipeline in northern Algeria on Monday, killing two guards and wounding seven other people, a security source told Reuters.

The Djebahia region, some 70 km (45 miles) east of the capital, is a stronghold of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) which earlier this month killed 37 foreigners at a gas plant in the south, and is where its leader Abdelmalek Droukdel is believed to be based, the source said.

Militant attacks are relatively rare in the north of the country where there is a heavy security presence that pushed most AQIM activities south.

"In comparison to the In Amenas attack, this is a very minor event," the source said, referring to the gas plant attack.

AQIM's leader Droukdel is believed to be somewhere in a triangle of three northern cities: Boumerdes, Bouira and Tizi Ouzou, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) from In Amenas, and has limited contact with other senior members of the group, the source said.

"The links are almost non-existent, and evidence of that is that there are no Libyan weapons with AQIM's militants in the north," a security source who asked not to be named told Reuters. The In Amenas attackers used arms smuggled across the desert border from Algeria's eastern neighbor.

(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Grief turns to anger after Brazil club fire; band in custody

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Relatives of the 231 people who died in a Brazilian nightclub fire demanded answers on Monday as to how it could have killed so many people, while police questioned the club's owner and members of the band whose pyrotechnics show allegedly caused the tragedy.

Several coffins, many draped with flags of the victims' favorite soccer teams, lined a gymnasium that has become a makeshift morgue since the fire in the early hours on Sunday, one of the world's deadliest such incidents in a decade.

The death toll was revised down overnight from 233 to 231, as officials said some names had been counted twice.

Eighty-two people remained hospitalized in and around the southern city of Santa Maria. At least 30 of them were in serious condition.

As shell-shocked residents attended a marathon of funerals starting in the pre-dawn hours on Monday, the focus began to shift to what will likely be a barrage of police investigations, lawsuits and recriminations aimed at politicians and others.

"We can't trust in the ability of city hall, or the police, or anybody who permits a party with more a thousand people under these conditions," said Erica Weber, who was accompanying her daughter to a funeral for one of her classmates.

Most of the dead were suffocated by toxic fumes that rapidly filled the Kiss nightclub after the band set off a pyrotechnics display at about 2:30 a.m, witnesses said.

State prosecutor Valeska Agostini told Reuters one of the club's owners and members of the band had been taken into police custody to answer questions although no arrests or criminal charges are likely until after the investigation is completed.

The band's guitarist, Rodrigo Lemos Martins, 32, said he doubted the band was responsible for the blaze. "There were lots of wires (in the ceiling), maybe it was a short circuit," Folha de S.Paulo newspaper quoted him as saying.

The band's accordion player, Danilo Jaques, 30, was among those killed but the other five members survived.

It seems certain others will share the blame for Brazil's second-deadliest fire ever. The use of a flare inside the club was a clear breach of security regulations, fire officials said, and witnesses said bouncers initially tried to prevent people from fleeing from the one functioning exit because they believed they were trying to skip out on their bar tabs.

Clubs and restaurants in Brazil are generally subject to a web of overlapping safety regulations, but enforcement is uneven and owners sometimes pay bribes to continue operating.

The investigation of the Kiss fire could drag on for years. After a similar fire at an Argentine nightclub in 2004 killed 194 people, more than six years passed before a court found members of a band criminally responsible for starting the blaze and causing the deaths.

That tragedy also provoked a massive backlash against politicians and led to the removal of the mayor of Buenos Aires.

Valdeci Oliveira, a legislator in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state where the weekend tragedy took place, said on his Twitter feed that he and his colleagues would seek to ban pyrotechnics displays in closed spaces such as nightclubs.

"It won't bring anybody back but we're going to introduce the bill," Oliveira said.

(Additional reporting by Eduardo Simões in São Paulo; Editing by Todd Benson and Bill Trott)

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Violence flares in Egypt after emergency law imposed

CAIRO (Reuters) - A man was shot dead on Monday in a fifth day of violence in Egypt that has killed 50 people and prompted the Islamist president to declare a state of emergency in an attempt to end a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world's biggest nation.

Emergency rule announced by President Mohamed Mursi on Sunday covers the cities of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. The army has already been deployed in two of those cities and cabinet approved a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians.

A cabinet source told Reuters any trials would be before civilian courts, but the step is likely to anger protesters who accuse Mursi of using high-handed security tactics of the kind they fought against to oust President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's politics have become deeply polarized since those heady days two years ago, when protesters were making most of the running in the Arab Spring revolutions that sent shockwaves through the region and Islamists and liberals lined up together.

Although Islamists have won parliamentary and presidential elections, the disparate opposition has since united against Mursi. Late last year he moved to expand his powers and push a constitution with Islamist leanings through a referendum, punctuated by violent street protests.

Mursi's call for a national dialogue meeting on Monday to help end the crisis was spurned by his main opponents.

They accuse Mursi of hijacking the revolution, listening only to his Islamist allies and breaking a promise to be a president for all Egyptians. Islamists say their rivals want to overthrow by undemocratic means Egypt's first freely elected leader.

Anti-Mursi protesters were out on the streets again in Cairo and elsewhere on Monday, the second anniversary of one of the bloodiest days in the revolution that erupted on January 25, 2011, and ended Mubarak's iron rule 18 days later.

CONCERNS

Hundreds of demonstrators in Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, cities which all lie on the economically vital Suez Canal, had turned out against Mursi's decision on Sunday within moments of him speaking. Activists there pledged to defy a curfew that starts at 9 p.m. (1700 GMT).

Instability in Egypt has raised concerns in Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of a key regional player that has a peace deal with Israel.

The political unrest has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting a year ago.

In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of teargas at stone-throwing protesters near Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising. A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot, a security source said. It was not clear who opened fire.

"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from teargas wafting towards him.

Propelled to the presidency in a June election by the Muslim Brotherhood, Mursi has lurched through a series of political crises and violent demonstrations, complicating his task of shoring up the economy and of preparing for a parliamentary election to cement the new democracy in a few months.

"The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Mursi said, angering many of his opponents when he wagged his finger at the camera.

The president offered condolences to families of victims of violence and also called a dialogue meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. (11 a.m. ET) between Islamist allies and their liberal, leftist and other opponents to discuss the crisis.

The main opposition National Salvation Front coalition rejected the offer as "cosmetic and not substantive" and set several conditions that have not been met in the past, such as forming a national salvation government. They also demanded that Mursi announce his responsibility for the bloodshed.

SECURITY MEASURES

"We will send a message to the Egyptian people and the president of the republic about what we think are the essentials for dialogue. If he agrees to them, we are ready for dialogue," opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference.

The opposition Front has distanced itself from the latest flare-ups but said Mursi should have acted far sooner to impose security measures that would have ended the violence.

"Of course we feel the president is missing the real problem on the ground, which is his own policies," Front spokesman Khaled Dawoud said after Mursi made his declaration.

Other activists said Mursi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.

"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanize the 2011 uprising said. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."

Thousands of mourners joined funerals in Port Said for the latest victims in the Mediterranean port city. Seven people were killed there on Sunday when residents joined marches to bury 33 others who had been killed a day earlier, most by gunshot wounds in a city where arms are rife.

Protests erupted there on Saturday after a court sentenced to death several people from the city for their role in deadly soccer violence last year, a verdict residents saw as unfair. The anger swiftly turned against Mursi and his government.

Rights activists said Mursi's declaration was a backward step for Egypt, which was under emergency law for Mubarak's entire 30-year rule. His police used the sweeping arrest provisions to muzzle dissent and round up opponents, including members of the Brotherhood and even Mursi himself.

Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch in Cairo said the police, still hated by many Egyptians for their heavy-handed tactics under Mubarak, would once again have the right to arrest people "purely because they look suspicious", undermining efforts to create a more efficient and respected police force.

"It is a classic knee-jerk reaction to think the emergency law will help bring security," she said. "It gives so much discretion to the Ministry of Interior that it ends up causing more abuse, which in turn causes more anger."

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia; Editing by Giles Elgood and Peter Millership)

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Suicide bomber kills eight Yemeni troops: officials

SANAA (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed at least eight Yemeni soldiers on Monday after troops backed by tanks attacked an al Qaeda stronghold following the collapse of talks to free three Western hostages, local officials and residents said.

Tackling lawlessness in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, which flanks the world's biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia, is an international priority. The United States views Yemen as a frontline in its struggle against al Qaeda.

A Finnish couple and an Austrian man, who were studying Arabic in Yemen, were snatched last month by tribesmen in the capital Sanaa. They were later sold to al Qaeda-linked members, and transferred to the southern al-Bayda province, a Yemeni official told Reuters earlier this month.

A government official said the army began its offensive in al Qaeda's al-Manaseh stronghold in al-Bayda early on Monday after the militants rejected demands to release the hostages.

Residents said they saw dozens of tanks and armored vehicles moving at dawn towards al-Manaseh.

"A few hours later, army forces started shelling. We could hear explosions," a man who gave his name only as Abdullah told Reuters by telephone.

In an apparent reprisal for the offensive, a suicide bomber drove a car laden with explosives into an army checkpoint in Radda, a town near al-Manaseh, killing the eight soldiers, local officials said.

The bombing came after suspected militants ambushed and killed three other soldiers near Radda, according to medics. At least 20 other soldiers were wounded in both attacks.

No figures were immediately available on rebel casualties.

The kidnapping of Westerners occurs sporadically in Yemen, mostly by tribesmen seeking bargaining clout in disputes with the authorities or by al Qaeda militants.

Washington and other Western governments regard al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has planned attacks on international targets including airliners, as one of the most dangerous offshoots of the global militant network founded by Osama bin Laden.

There have been dozens of killings of security and military officials by suspected al Qaeda gunmen in the past year, suggesting AQAP remains resilient despite increased U.S. drone strikes and an onslaught by government forces.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Mahmoud Habboush and Rania El Gamal; Editing by Sami Aboudi and Pravin Char)

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Bangladesh, India sign extradition and visa deals

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh and India on Monday signed an extradition treaty and struck a deal to relax business visa restrictions between the neighboring countries.

The extradition treaty could pave the way for Bangladesh to put on trial several crime bosses who crossed the border into India but are still running their gangs by telephone, a senior official at Bangladesh's Home Affairs Ministry told Reuters.

It could also help India bring back fugitive separatists who have fled to Bangladesh including Ulfa leader Anup Chetia.

"We are particularly grateful as the treaty will deal with Indian insurgent groups," Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Rao Shinde told reporters at a joint press conference.

"Both sides committed to act against elements inimical to both countries," he said.

India has long been pressing for Chetia's deportation. He has been in a Dhaka jail since his arrest in 1997 on charges of entering Bangladesh without valid documents.

The travel agreement between India and Bangladesh will allow business visas to be valid for up to five years instead of the current one year.

"Such an arrangement will help to boost the trade and business of Bangladesh with India," said Mahbubur Rahman, president of the International Chamber of Commerce of Bangladesh.

"If Bangladeshis can travel freely, and the exporters can get their payment freely, then in less than 10 years Bangladesh's exports can be tripled to that country," Rahman said.

(Editing by Pravin Char)

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Dispute over military command holds up Congo peace deal

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - African leaders failed on Monday to sign a U.N.-mediated peace deal aimed at ending two decades of conflict in eastern Congo, said a senior Congolese diplomat, who pointed to concerns over who would command a new regional military force.

The agreement was to include the deployment of several thousand extra soldiers to tackle armed militias in the mineral-rich east. The brigade would fight under the banner of the U.N.'s MONUSCO peacekeeping force.

Diplomats at an African Union summit in Ethiopia said the troops would come from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), notably Tanzania.

Leaders from the Great Lakes region had originally been expected to sign the deal on Monday morning.

Seraphin Ngwej, a senior diplomatic adviser to Congolese President Joseph Kabila, said SADC members had raised questions over who would command the intervention force - SADC or MONUSCO.

"(SADC) wants assurances the brigade can do what they want it to do," said the diplomatic source who declined to be named.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he had postponed the signing because of "procedural differences" and stressed there were no fundamental differences on the agreement's content between the eight regional states involved.

A fresh rebellion launched last year in Congo's east, a region where ethnic tensions and vast mineral deposits have fuelled a series of cross-border wars - raised fears of another conflict in the borderlands zone.

BOLSTERING PEACEKEEPER MANDATE

The M23 rebel movement swept across Congo's North Kivu province and in November seized the provincial capital of Goma, a city of 1 million people. The rebels later left the city to pave the way for peace talks.

The group is named after a March 23, 2009 peace deal that integrated Tutsi-dominated rebels into Congo's army, but which they say the government violated. The rebels are now also demanding wide-ranging political reforms. ž

MONUSCO was widely criticized for failing to halt the rebels' southern advance on Goma. The force said its helicopters had fired hundreds of rockets but were unable to beat back the swelling ranks of the rebels as government forces fled.

However, U.N. chief Ban said any perception that the peacekeepers had failed was misinformed. The peacekeepers had a strict mandate, and responsibility for security lay first and foremost with the Congolese government and its army.

Nevertheless, he said, "We are now looking at a different approach, how we can strengthen the capacity of MONUSCO."

U.N. officials say the new intervention brigade's mandate would be more robust than MONUSCO's.

Regional tensions escalated last year when a U.N. group of experts reported Rwanda and Uganda were both supporting the M23 rebellion. Both countries have denied involvement.

A second diplomat said the obstacles blocking the Congo peace deal were broader than just the intervention force. He gave no further details.

Separate peace talks between the Kinshasa government and M23 rebels hosted by Uganda have stalled.

Diplomats at the AU summit said it was unclear whether the delays to the deal would hold up a recommendation by Ban to the U.N. Security Council that the new force be deployed.

Ngwej said that under the proposed regional agreement the Kinshasa government would commit to security sector reforms, including the army.

(Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Louise Ireland and Drazen Jorgic)

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