El Agheila (Arabic: العقيلة, romanized: al-ʿUqayla pronunciationⓘ) is a coastal city at the southern end of the Gulf of Sidra and Mediterranean Sea in far western Cyrenaica, Libya.

[4] In February 1941, El Agheila was taken by the British Western Desert Force following their destruction of the Italian Tenth Army in Operation Compass.

This gave the German Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel a chance to arrive and launch an offensive which retook El Agheila in March and drove the British all the way back to Tobruk and the Egyptian frontier.

This time he captured Tobruk and advanced into Egypt before being halted at El Alamein in July 1942 and decisively defeated there in November.

The Afrika Korps was broken, and its retreating remnants gave up El Agheila for the final time to the advancing British Eighth Army in December 1942.