Sallum

Sallum is a small harbourside town in Matrouh Governorate, on the Mediterranean coast in the far northwest corner of Egypt, about eight kilometres east of the border with Libya. It sits at the foot of the great escarpment known as the Aqaba al-Kabir, and the town takes its name from the graded pass that climbs the ridge, which is the only roadworthy way up it in the area. A small Roman port once stood here, and some Roman wells survive nearby. Today it is mainly a Bedouin community of merchants, fishermen and herdsmen and a key trading centre for the surrounding desert, with a post office and a bank branch and little tourism. Its position made it a frontier prize: it was held by Ottoman Tripolitania, taken by an Anglo-Egyptian force in 1911, fixed on the Egyptian side of the border by the 1925 treaty, and fought over in both world wars. A Commonwealth war cemetery near Halfaya Pass holds more than two thousand soldiers. The 1977 Libyan attack on Sallum began the Libyan-Egyptian War.