United Nations: A team of experts led by UNESCO said Friday it has found far more serious damage to Mali’s cultural heritage in the fabled city of Timbuktu than initially estimated, with 16 mausoleums totally destroyed and over 4,000 ancient manuscripts lost.

Lazare Eloundou Assomo of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, who led the mission, said a visit to the damaged and destroyed sites on Thursday revealed that the destruction by Islamist rebels who occupied Timbuktu and the rest of the north until early this year “is even more alarming than we thought”.

“We discovered that 14 of Timbuktu’s mausoleums, including those that are part of the UNESCO World Heritage sites, were totally destroyed, along with two others at the Djingareyber Mosque,” a famous learning centre built in 1327 which also needs to be repaired, he said.

The El Farouk independence monument at the entrance to the city was also razed, Eloundou Assomo said.

Timbuktu, an ancient seat of Islamic learning, has been home for centuries to a library of ancient, camel-skin bound manuscripts covering science, astrology, medicine, history, theology, grammar and geography as well as a 700-year-old mud mosque.

Al Qaida-linked Islamists swept into the city in the spring of 2012 with their own, severe interpretation of Islam, intent on quashing what they saw as the veneration of idols instead of the pure worship of Allah. Part of that included reducing to rubble the mausoleums honouring the city’s saints. The Islamists ran Timbuktu and the rest of northeastern Mali for months before being chased out by French-led troops in January.

During the Islamists rule, Eloundou Assomo said, the international experts estimate that over 4,200 manuscripts from the Ahmed Baba research centre were lost, including between 2,000 and 3,000 that were burned and others that were stolen.

Another 300,000 manuscripts were smuggled out - mainly to the capital Bamako - for safekeeping and are now in urgent need of conservation, he said.

Eloundou Assomo estimated cost of rehabilitating and preserving the ancient manuscripts - the top priority for the city’s religious leaders - at $11 million.

“Some of these funds have to be found so we can begin as soon as possible on this work,” he said.

Meanwhile, talks between Malian authorities and armed ethnic Tuareg groups, who hold the northeastern town of Kidal, will get underway Saturday after a day’s delay, a source close to the Burkinabe mediators said.

“The negotiations will start (Saturday),” the source said, with Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaore, a mediator for West Africa, first meeting representatives of the international community .

“Then at 11.00 (local and GMT) negotiations will open with the Malian parties,” the source said.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Mali spoke earlier of his optimism that the talks between the government and armed rebels would ease the way for elections, despite recent heavy fighting.

Asked whether deadly clashes between Tuareg rebels and Malian soldiers in the country’s north this week had undermined the dialogue in Burkina Faso, Bert Koenders replied: “No, I don’t think so.”

Koenders told reporters in Bamako he placed “great hope in the Ouagadougou negotiations”, which have brought together Malian officials and Tuareg leaders to hammer out a deal on organising free and fair elections.

The talks had been due to get under way on Friday, but were postponed at the last minute at Bamako’s request, a diplomatic source said.

The unexplained delay highlights the palpable tension in recent days, after heavy fighting near rebel-held Kidal.

Armed ethnic Tuaregs from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) rose up to fight for independence for the north in January last year and overwhelmed government troops, leading frustrated mid-level officers to launch a coup that toppled elected president Amadou Toumani Toure.