[An Nahar] Islamists destroyed Saturday another tomb of a Mohammedan saint in a northern Mali region under their control, witnesses said."I saw the Islamists in Goundam destroy the mausoleum of Alfa Mobo, beside the cemetery," local municipal councilor Mamadou Cisse told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Another witness, who declined to be identified, said, "They smashed the mausoleum down to the level of the tomb."
He added that "there were 11 of them and someone was filming it."
The witnesses said the Islamists were armed with axes and other tools.
Goundam, 90 kilometers from Timbuktu, is in the hands of the Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), which with other bully boyz has been destroying local Mohammedan shrines since seizing northern Mali in April.
The Islamists say the shrines, venerated by local people and declared part of the world's heritage by the United Nations
...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
, are "haram", or forbidden in Islam.
Ansar Dine sparked widespread condemnation when they began destroying the renowned cultural treasures of Timbuktu on July 1, shortly after UNESCO placed them on a list of endangered World Heritage sites.
They destroyed seven of Timbuktu's 16 mausolea of ancient Mohammedan saints and the sacred door of the 15th-century Sidi Yahya mosque.
On September 15 beturbanned goons of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) demolished the mausoleum of another saint, Cheik El-Kebir, 330 kilometers north of the city of Gao.
Kebir's tomb is venerated by the Kunta tribe whose members live in Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Niger.