Regarding them as idolatrous, the Islamist militia has taken hammers and shovels to their baked-mud adobe walls. They even destroyed a pair of ancient tombs set in the compound of the city’s celebrated Djingareyber mosque.

For all intents and purposes Timbuktu has been sealed off from the outside world just as it was through history. No foreign journalists are permitted anywhere near the city, and all Western aid workers have long since been evacuated.

Speaking from Bamako, one newly arrived refugee there, named Lassana, recounted his last afternoon before fleeing with his family: “A pickup truck arrived at a mausoleum near my home,” he said. “In the back were five or six young men with guns. They were laughing and jeering, waving their weapons in the air. I told my wife and children to stay inside and to make no noise. Then I went out and watched as they broke down the shrine, whooping as they did so....