Islamist militants are trashing the ancient treasures of Timbuktu, Mali’s fabled desert city, destroying shrines to Islamic saints and attacking a mosque.

The militants today broke down the door of Sidi Yahia, a 15th-century mosque, the BBC reported. Sidi Yahia is one of Timbuktu’s three great mosques, and the door had previously been sealed for centuries as it led to the sacred tomb of saints.

The Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) militant group has seized control of Timbuktu, at the edge of the Sahara Desert, and is on a campaign to destroy historic mausoleums that it says are outside its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Ansar Dine, said to have links to Al Qaeda, has already destroyed seven shrines by smashing them with pick-axes, Agence France-Presse reported.

AFP said some Timbuktu residents sobbed as the militants broke down the Sidi Yahia mosque’s sacred door.

More from GlobalPost: Mali Islamists announce plans to keep destroying Timbuktu

A spokesman for Ansar Dine told the BBC that the group hopes to “destroy every mausoleum in the city — all of them, without exception.”

UNESCO, the UN’s heritage agency, has placed Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger, and has spoken out against the violence.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Sunday warned that the destruction of religious buildings could amount to war crimes.

Timbuktu, with its centuries-old mud mosques and ancient manuscripts held in the town’s libraries, was until recently a tourist hotspot. Many visitors would come for a famous festival of Malian music, the Festival in the Desert.

But visitors have been deterred by tourist kidnappings by the North African branch of Al Qaeda.

More from GlobalPost: Timbuktu preserves historic manuscripts

NAIROBI, Kenya — As Timbuktu is thrown into turmoil by a rebel occupation UNESCO is warning of the potential threat the fighting and looting might pose to the city’s collections of ancient manuscripts. There are more than 100,000 of them and some are nearly a thousand years old. They are mostly kept in family collections and all are proof of a thriving cultural, religious, commercial and literary life in the African desert at a time when Europe was lost in the Dark Ages.

A few years ago I traveled to Timbuktu to learn about the manuscripts and then left by boat on the Niger River heading for the town of Mopti, a few days sail away. The peace and beauty of Mali then is all a depressingly far cry from the news today, so here is a story about what it was like before and what it might be again.

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