Villa Cisneros

Dakhla, or ad-Dakhla (formerly Villa Cisneros), is a city in Western Sahara with about 30,000 inhabitants. It is about 550 km south of El Aaiún on the Atlantic Coast, located in a narrow peninsula. Dakhla was founded as Villa Cisneros in 1884 by Spanish settlers.

During the colonial period, the Spanish authorities made Dakhla capital of the province of Río de Oro, one of the two regions of the Spanish Sahara. They built a military fortress and a modern Catholic church, which remain points of interest for visitors to the city. A prison camp also existed here during the Spanish Civil War, at which writers such as Pedro García Cabrera were imprisoned.

During the 1960s, the Francoist dictatorship also built here one of the three paved airports in Western Sahara (IATA Code: VIL).

Recently, the city has become one of the big centers of protest against the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. In May, 25 2005 Moroccan police suppressed a peaceful demonstration in support of the Sahrawi 'Independence Intifada' and the Polisario Front.

In the area south of Tindouf, Algeria, there is a Sahrawi refugee camp named after Dakhla.