Bir Hakeim (oasis)

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Ruins of the fort at Bir Hakeim
Location of Bir Hacheim on front maps, 1942

Bir Hakeim (also Bir Hacheim ; Arabic بئر حكيم, DMG Biʾr Ḥakīm ) is a former desert oasis in the Libyan desert , around 65 km south of Tobruk . The place is no longer inhabited.

history

During the First World War, there was a prisoner-of - war camp of the Senussi order in Bir Hakeim . On March 17, 1916, the British freed the prisoners, killing almost all of the locals there. A fortress built here by the Ottomans was used as a garrison by the Italian camel rider corps in the 20th century . The former wells of Bir Hakeim had dried up before 1942. During the Second World War , the battle of Bir Hakeim between the Panzer Army Africa and Free French troops took place here. The ground in the former combat area is still covered with landmines and duds.

When the Gaddafi government wanted to build a water pipeline from the Al- Kufrah oases to Tobruk for agricultural use of the desert in the early 1990s , extensive mine-clearing work had to be carried out in order to create a corridor.

location

Bir Hakeim used to be at the intersection of two Bedouin streets. Today, however, the Tobruk – Ajdabiya desert road passes the ruins a few kilometers away.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Edward L. Bimberg: Tricolor over the Sahara: the desert battles of the Free French, 1940-1942 . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, p. 101
  2. ↑ Alain BUU / Gamma-Rapho: Land mines still kill in Bir-Hakeim on January 2nd, 2002, Bir Hakeim, Libya. Getty Images , January 2, 2002, accessed July 26, 2014 .
  3. ↑ A man and five million mines , ZDF , Die Reportage 1993, 30 ′, Wolfgang Schoen

Coordinates: 31 ° 35 ′ 37.93 "  N , 23 ° 28 ′ 47.16"  E