[3] Arab Union Contracting Co. (AUCC) commissioned a 1.2-Mt/yr-capacity cement clinker plant near Zliten in December 2004; commercial production began in September 2005.

[4] In 2004, construction began on extending a seawater desalination plant in Zliten with a total capacity of 10,000 cubic metres (8.1 acre⋅ft) per day using the multi-stage flash distillation process.

On Friday, 24 August 2012 the shrine of Sidi Abdul-Salam Al-Asmar Al-Fituri suffered extensive damage at the hands of violent Salafists.

Muhammad al-Madkhali, a cleric of the Madkhalism movement,[7] praised his loyalists who'd carried out the act and encouraged other Salafists to engage in similar attacks.

[9][10][11] Recent work on the region (dating between 2003 and 2017) using Google Earth imagery has identified 278 certain or potential archaeological sites within Zliten.

The majority of these sites were determined as structures or enclosures, and their purpose, for most, interpreted as related to agricultural activities which the primary land use today.

These 278 sites recorded in the EAMENA(Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa) database of the Zliten area.

Archaeological sites, as in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan do not comply to militant revolutionaries' aims, they are thus expendable and can/or in some cases 'must' be destroyed (https://www.nature.com/news/cultural-heritage-save-libyan-archaeology-1.16781).

[citation needed] Tarbuni is often served with the most famous local dish asida, made from flour, boiled with salt, and eaten with olive and date juice.

[13] During the 2011 Libyan Civil War, Zliten was contested between forces loyal to Gaddafi, and opposition fighters who were trying to seize the strategically located city to allow them to advance to the capital, Tripoli.