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| - Thousands of protesters rallied in the northern Mali city of Timbuktu on Friday, organisers said, opposing French President Emmanuel Macron's defence of the right to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Demonstrators amassed in a central square in desert city in a protest organised by youth group, who put the attendance at about 10,000 people, although AFP could not independently confirm the numbers. "Timbuktu cannot remain indifferent to this condemnation of the Muslim community," Sane Chirfi Alpha, who attended the rally, told AFP by telephone. "We are an old civilisation, we are for peace living together and we knew the value of each religion," he added. France has been rocked by multiple deadly attacks in recent weeks that are suspected to be linked to Islamist extremism, including the latest at a church in Nice on Thursday when a knifeman killed three people. In the first attack, on October 16, a suspected Islamist extremist beheaded a school teacher in France's capital Paris after he showed pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a class on free speech. Such cartoons are viewed as offensive to Islam. The cartoons were those published multiple times by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the offices of which were attacked in 2015 by Islamist extremists. Macron promised to "not give up cartoons" in the aftermath of the attack, sparking a wave of protests against the president and calls to boycott French goods in several Muslim-majority nations. Mali, an overwhelmingly Muslim country in Africa's Sahel region, has been struggling to contain a brutal jihadist insurgency which first emerged in 2012. "The fight against terrorism in Mali and the Sahel could suffer by attacking the fundamental values of the Muslim religion," Yehia Ould Bana, a youth leader, told AFP by telephone. He also likened attacking the Prophet to starting "an endless war with multiple enemies" and urged Macron him to "pull himself together" to respect "the freedom and beliefs of other nations". France has 5,100 soldiers deployed across the Sahel as part of its anti-jihadist Operation Barkhane. Friday's rally in Timbuktu comes alongside the Muslim festival of Mawlid, which marks the prophet's birthday. kt-eml/cdw
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