It is located in a particularly isolated area, not only because it is in the middle of the Sahara Desert but also because it is surrounded on three sides by depressions which make it dominate the passage in east-west land traffic across the desert. For the colonial Italians, it was also important as a station on the north-south air route to Italian East Africa. These factors, along with Kufra's dominance of the southeastern Cyrenaica region of Libya, highlight the strategic importance of the oasis and why it was a point of conflict during World War II.