Life in Timbuktu
France has deployed more than 3,500 ground forces in a lightning three-week campaign that has wrested control of towns in northern Mali, including historic Timbuktu, from an al Qaeda-linked alliance.
As the conflict continues, life goes on in Timbuktu, where these residents attend Friday prayers at the Djinguereber mosque.
Malians attend Friday prayers at the Djinguereber mosque.
They clasp hands as they sit and pray.
A French soldier patrols outside the mosque.
Prayer beads lie on a carpet at the mosque.
Children listen to a school teacher after the reopening of Mahamane Fondogoumo elementary school.
Malian soldiers walk around a market among stacks of buckets and pots.
Malian soldiers stand guard in the market.
A Malian man smokes a cigarette in front of a shop with Malian and French flags hanging outside.
Malian soldiers talk with civilians in central Timbuktu.
A Malian soldier with a gun slung over his shoulder talks to two men.
A museum guard picks up boxes holding ancient manuscripts partially damaged by Islamist rebels who ransacked Timbuktu's Ahmed Baba Institute, a library containing thousands of ancient documents. Experts said, however, that the majority of Timbuktu's ancient manuscripts appeared to be safe and undamaged.
Pictures of Mali's interim President Dioncounda Traore and France's President Francois Hollande are taped to a car.
People hold Malian and French flags during the reopening ceremony of the Mahamane Fondogoumo elementary school.
People drive past a road sign written by Islamist rebels at the entrance into Timbuktu.
A Tuareg man lifts a blanket off the burnt body of an Islamist rebel near a destroyed vehicle on the road between Diabaly and Timbuktu.
He holds a bullet near the burnt vehicle.
