Witnesses in Mali's fabled city said rebels had entered Timbuktu on Sunday. The rebel Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) spoke of the "end of Malian occupation" and said it would ensure "order and administration."

The news agency AFP quoted a spokesman for Mali's junta, which seized power in mid-March, as saying it had "inherited a desperate situation. We have already dispatched emissaries on the ground to obtain a ceasefire."

On Saturday, Mali's military had abandoned bases around another northern city, Gao, 200 kilometers from Timbuktu.

Timbuktu residents on Sunday said Tuarag rebels had fired heavy weapons at what appeared to be an empty army base in the city, which is a United Nation's world heritage site.

"As we speak, I see them going towards a bank in the city," one resident told AFP.

A soldier in Timbuktu quoted by the Associated Press said rebels had allowed safe departure for soldiers from the Bambara ethnicity who dominate the nation's south.

The encirclement follows the fall of another strategic town, Kidal, north of Gao, earlier this week.

Pressure mounts on junta

In response to rebel and international pressure, Mali's coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo announced late on Saturday in the capital, Bamako, the reinstatement of the vast nation's 1992 constitution and state institutions.

Mali's neighbors grouped within The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have threatened to impose crippling sanctions if Mali's constitutional order is not restored by Monday. Western powers including the EU and the US have already suspended development aid except for drought relief.

Sanogo said the junta had decided to engage "under the guidance of a mediator, in consultations with all the forces active in our country." These talks, he said, should lead to free elections.

Standing next to him was Burkina Faso Foreign Minister Djibril Bassole. ECOWAS has already put 2,000 of its troops on standby.

On its website earlier on Sunday, the rebel MNLA said it had encircled Timbuktu to "dislodge Mali's remaining political and military administration."

For decades the MNLA has sought independence of what they consider to be their desert homeland. They have been joined by local Islamist fighters thought to have ties to al Qaeda's North Africa branch.

The ancestors of nomadic Tuaregs first created Timbuktu in the 11th century at a major crossroads for African and Arabic caravan trade at a location where the Niger River nears the Sahara Desert.

Timbuktu became an ancient seat of Islamic learning and is renowned for its 700-year-old terracotta-colored mosque. It came under French colonial rule in 1893 until 1960 when Mali became independent.

ipj/slk (AFP, AP, epd, Reuters)