[6] A few hours after the fighting began, a suicide bomber approached the airport in a camouflaged military vehicle and detonated a car bomb, killing a soldier and injuring two others.

[8][9] On the 30th of March, according to a spokesman for the army, fighters from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) attacked the city late on Saturday night and continued fighting until Sunday.

The attack started at about 10 pm local time, when a jihadist suicide bomber blew himself up at a military checkpoint at the western entrance to Timbuktu.

According to Mali army Captain Modibo Naman Traore, the suicide bombing served only to distract the military and allow a group of jihadists to infiltrate by night.

Timbuktu's mayor Ousmane Halle also confirmed that radical Islamists moved to the high school, near the army camp in the city.

The statement said: "During our clean-up operation, the Mali and French armies destroyed a public building in the centre of the town where the terrorists were hiding.

The incident began when a group of two to three militants managed to enter a small house located on the side of the army camp.

A spokesman for the Malian army in Timbuktu said there were still rebel movements behind the military camp in the town center and in the alleyways by the 14th century Djinguereber Mosque, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

By Monday afternoon, according to the French ministry of defense, jihadists fled Timbuktu to the northeast direction after Mirage and Rafale jets flew over the city to hunt down the fighters.