TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — A pile of stones and wood was all that remained of the house where Fadimata Walet Abdou Salam once lived when she and her young daughters returned after more than a year of sleeping in a tent as refugees in a foreign country.

Looters had stolen the windows and doors, and then heavy rains transformed the earthen walls into a heap of mud after she had to abandon her home in Timbuktu following unrest and violence.