Buoyed by over-optimistic intelligence assessments of the casualties suffered by the German armour, Auchinleck strongly urged Ritchie to mount a counter-attack along the coast to take advantage of the German armour's absence and to break through to Timimi and then Mechili.
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He recaptured Benghazi on 28 January, and Timimi on 3 February and pressed on toward the fortified port of Tobruk on the Mediterranean coast.
On 28 March Steinhausen claimed his 10th victory, when he shot down a Kittyhawk fighter of 94 Squadron RAF flown by P/O Crosbie, near Timimi.
On 6 April, Lieutenant-General Philip Neame—by that time the military governor of Cyrenaica (Wilson had been sent to command W Force in Greece)—withdrew his headquarters to Tmimi, west of Tobruk.
Greek historian Herodotus said that Cyrene was founded in mid-7th century BC, when a group of Greek immigrants from Thera landed at the Gulf of Bomba, and stayed there for years, then, they moved to place of Cyrene, and then, founded it.
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On 21 January 1942, during World War II, German general Erwin Rommel commanded his Axis-Panzer army through Cyrenaica, and his troops reached Timimi in 3 February 1942, stopping there.
Timimi |