LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Members of Ansar Dine have reportedly destroyed 15th-century mausoleums of Sufi Muslim saints in Timbuktu, threatening to demolish the remaining 13 UNESCO world heritage sites in the fabled city, witnesses have said.

"They have already completely destroyed the mausoleum of Sidi Mahmoud (Ben Amar) and two others. They said they would continue all day and destroy all 16," Yeya Tandina, a local Malian journalist, said by telephone.

"They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly," he said.

Islamists were also taking pick-axes to the mausoleum of Sidi El Mokhtar, another cherished local saint.

"It looks as if it is a direct reaction to the UNESCO decision," Timbuktu deputy Sandy Haidara, confirming the attacks.

The Islamist Ansar Dine group considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam as idolatrous.

"Ansar Dine will today destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception," group spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama declared.

"God is unique. All of this is haram (or forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. UNESCO is what?" he said, declaring that Ansar Dine was acting "in the name of God."

The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO deplored the "tragic" destruction and called for the rampage to stop.

"This is tragic news for us all," UNESCO executive committee chair Alissandra Cummins said in a statement. "I appeal to all those engaged in the conflict in Timbuktu to exercise their responsibility."

Since government forces were routed in April, Ansar Dine and other Islamist groups with links to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have gained the upper hand over less well-armed Tuaregs whose goal is a secular, independent northern state.

Beyond its historic mosques, the World Heritage site of Timbuktu, once a cradle of Islamic learning, has 16 cemeteries and mausolea, according to the UNESCO Web site.

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