On June 25, 2012, a local elected official and teacher of the city, Idrissa Oumarou was shot at close range by strangers on motorcycle. This murder provoked the anger of the population, and the next day hundreds of people demonstrated in the city. The anger of the population overwhelmed by the regular deprivation of water and electricity and by insecurity soon turned against the MNLA's independence movement. According to testimonies the flags of the MUJAO were mixed with the Malian flags during the event. When the demonstrators arrived near the governorate, MNLA men opened fire to disperse the rioters, one or two protesters were killed and at least 12 to 14 wounded. Fighting began in the morning of 26 June, with both sides firing heavy weapons. MNLA Secretary General
Bilal ag Acherif was wounded in the attack. After being extricated from the fighting, he was later taken to a hospital in Burkina Faso's capital city of
Ouagadougou; while Colonel Bouna Ag Tahib, a defector from the Malian army, was killed.
MOJWA soon took control of the Gao governor's palace as well as Ag Acherif's residence. A MOJWA spokesman stated that 40 MNLA troops had been taken prisoner. The MNLA's Azawad Vice President
Mahamadou Djeri Maïga acknowledged that they lost control of the city but said that the fight would continue. He asked for international help against
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who he stated was responsible for the attack. Two videos seen by the
Agence France-Presse (AFP) showed the black flag of
jihad groups and some members of the group saying "Long Live Mali" and singing the
national anthem of Mali, respectively. A previous death toll of 20 was later revised by doctors who added the number of dead found in the
Niger River and the wounded who succumbed to their injuries. Thirty more Algerian fighters were said to have arrived in the city on 29 June to support AQIM and its leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar as the latter seeks to maintain a hold on the town and track MNLA fighters.
Reactions Ansar Dine's Chief of Security for Gao,
Omar Ould Hamaha, said that the group controls the region and would impose
sharia. Our fighters control the perimeter. We control Timbuktu completely. We control Gao completely. It's Ansar Dine that commands the north of Mali. Now we have every opportunity to apply sharia. Sharia does not require a majority vote. It's not democracy. It's the divine law that was set out by God to be followed by his slaves. One hundred percent of the north of Mali is Muslim, and even if they don't want this, they need to go along with it. Paris-based MNLA spokesman, Moussa Ag Assarid, said that though the group had lost ground in the big cities "we control 90% of the Azawad." On 26 June 2012 the
Tomb of Askia, which had been listed as part of a
UNESCO World Heritage Site, was named by UNESCO as "endangered" at the behest of Mali amid fears of damage to "important ancient manuscripts" from being "looted and smuggled abroad by unscrupulous dealers." Two days later, the same was done for Timbuktu. A statement by the
World Heritage Committee also read that it "asked Mali's neighbours to do all in their power to prevent the trafficking in cultural objects from these sites."
ECOWAS then met on 29 June in the Ivorian capital of
Yamoussoukro in order to work towards "additional measures to prevent matters in Mali becoming bogged down," according to host President
Alassane Ouattara. The meeting was also attended by the mediator for the Malian crisis following the
2012 Malian coup d'etat, Burkina Faso President
Blaise Compaore, Niger President
Mahamadou Issoufou and Malian interim Prime Minister
Cheick Modibo Diarra. While the group was expected to call for negotiations with movements in the Azawad region, it was also expected to continue with plans to get a 3,300 personnel intervention force together to invade the region. By 2 July, AQIM, along with its allies, were reported to have mined the periphery of the city. The MNLA spokesman, Mossa Ag Attaher, said that AQIM was "using the population as hostages, as a human shield to protect itself from an MNLA counter-attack...Many people are trying to escape, to take the bus to go to Bamako, but the Islamists are stopping them." On 3 July, MOJWA released 25 MNLA prisoners who had been captured during the battle to show that "they were for the peace," after being asked to do so by
Iyad Ag Ghaly. At the same time, Guinean President
Alpha Condé said that an ECOWAS military intervention would be directed against the Islamists and not the MNLA. ==Timbuktu==