Mali Islamist Rebel Group Says against Tuareg Independence

The Islamist group Ansar Dine says that despite battling alongside the main Tuareg rebels in northern Mali, it is against their declaration of independence and is simply fighting for Islam.

"Our war is a holy war. It's a legal war in the name of Islam. We are against rebellions. We are against independence. We are against revolutions not in the name of Islam," its military chief Omar Hamaha said, in a video obtained by Agence France Presse.

The footage shot in Timbuktu, the fabled northern city now controlled by Ansar Dine, showed armed rebels driving through dusty streets as wary locals looked on from the sidewalks.

In one street some shacks that had served as makeshift bars were in flames. Other scenes showed deserted and ransacked police stations and government buildings.

"Independence is Islam. That's the real independence. It's to implement sharia, from sunrise to sunset," said Hamaha.

"What we want is not Azawad. It's Islam! Islam!" Hamaha said in French to shouts of joy from a crowd in Timbuktu in scenes filmed on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Mali's main Tuareg rebel group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), on Friday declared independence in the north, a vast swathe of mainly desert which it calls Azawad.

The MNLA captured northern Mali along with Ansar Dine, a much smaller group, over the past fortnight after a coup in the capital Bamako.

Ansar Dine, "Defenders of Faith" in Arabic, which has links to al-Qaida's north African branch, subsequently took control of Timbuktu and set about imposing Islamic sharia law.

It had ordered women to wear headscarves and threatened to cut off the hands of thieves in the ancient city that was once the jewel in Mali's tourism industry.

The video from Timbuktu showed one group of rebels loitering outside a military camp, with their black flag draped over the name of the barracks above the entrance.

A local man said he had met and talked with some members of Ansar Dine.

"They told us they didn't want to split the country but to implement sharia, Islamic law. They started to ask the girls to get dressed decently, people to go to the mosque, to really apply what Islam says," he said.

In other scenes in the video, small groups of women walked along the city's streets. Some wore full-face veils but most simply covered their hair with scarves.

Hamaha said his group had "more than 120 prisoners", including thieves.

"We have tied them up and taken their weapons. We beat them well and it's likely we will slit their throats," he added, while it was not clear if this threat was aimed at all prisoners.

In another part of Timbuktu, residents were seen queuing up with their belongings to try to board trucks to take them out of the city.

Humanitarian groups have warned Mali is on the brink of catastrophe as hundreds of thousands of people flee the unrest and rebels loot food and medical supplies across an arid region already facing food shortages.