Mali to give French president new camel after first one is eaten

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  By ReutersMalian authorities will give French President Francois Hollande another  camel after the one they gave him in thanks for helping repel Islamist  rebels was killed and eaten by the family he left it with in Timbuktu,  an official in Mali said.

Follow @NBCNewsWorldA local government official in northern Mali said on Tuesday a replacement would be sent to France.

"As  soon as we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and  better-looking camel," said the official, who asked not to be named  because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"The new  camel will be sent to Paris. We are ashamed of what happened to the  camel. It was a present that did not deserve this fate."  


Hollande  was presented with the camel when he visited Mali in February several  weeks after dispatching French troops to the former colony to help  combat al Qaeda-linked fighters moving south from a base in the north of  the country.

The president joked at the time about using the  camel to get around traffic-jammed Paris. But he chose in the end to  leave it with a family in the town on the edge of the Sahara desert.

Defense  Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was tasked with giving Hollande regular  updates on the camel's status and had to inform him of its death last  week, French media said.

"The news came in from soldiers on the ground," said a French government official.

French leaders have received many gifts of exotic or wild animals from Africa and further afield over the years.

Last  week, a robber chainsawed a tusk off the skeleton of an elephant  offered to Louis XIV by a Portuguese king in 1668. Police caught the  robber as he fled, tusk under his arm.

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