Timbuktu manuscripts safe?

NOTE THE IMPORTANT UPDATE to today's earlier post, One of the burned Timbuktu manuscripts was in Hebrew. There are conflicting reports that the libraries were not burned or that at least some manuscripts were saved.

UPDATE (30 January): This from Lila Azam Zanganeh, Has the Great Library of Timbuktu Been Lost?, in The New Yorker:

Jean-Michel Djian, a French writer who specializes in West African culture, and is author of a recent book, “The Manuscripts of Timbuktu,” confirmed by phone last night that parts of the various collections were safe. “The great majority of the manuscripts, about fifty thousand, are actually housed in the thirty-two family libraries of the ‘City of 333 Saints,’ ” he said. “Those are to this day protected.” Djian also revealed that Abdel Kader Haidara, the owner of his family’s “Mamma Haidara” library, had transported, two months ago, more than fifteen thousand of its manuscripts to the capital city in order to protect them. Djian said that the same was true of the several thousand manuscripts of the Kati Foundation in Timbuktu. “The rest,” he added with a crack in his voice, “is unknown.”