Dikhil

Dikhil دخيل
Town
Entrance to Dikhil
Dikhil دخيل Location in Djibouti
Coordinates: 11°06′30″N 42°22′16″E / 11.10833°N 42.37111°E / 11.10833; 42.37111
Country	Djibouti
Region	Dikhil
Established	19th century
Area
• Total	4 km2 (2 sq mi)
Elevation	507 m (1,663 ft)
Population (2015)
• Total	54,000
Time zone	EAT (UTC+3)

Dikhil is a town in the western Dikhil Region of Djibouti. Lying east of Lake Abbe, It is situated about 100 kilometers Southwest of Djibouti City and 12 km (7 mi) north of the border with Ethiopia. The town is home to a population of around 54,000 people. The town develops gardens and fruit trees. The climate in the city is characterized by high to very high temperatures (average maximum daily temperatures by month, between 25-39 °C).

Since 1986, the survey work sites were performed by R. Joussaume and researchers ISERST. The engravings oldest discovered to date are from the fourth or third millennium BC In the pre-Islamic period, the most famous is the site of Handoga Dikhil near where the ruins of a village squares subcircular dry stone delivered different objects. Including ceramic shards matching vases used brazier, or containers that can hold water, several choppers and microliths, blades, drills, trenchers basalt, rhyolite or obsidian. Also a pearl orange coralline, three glass paste, etc.. No trace of metal object. The place-name literally means "Water hole or a well" in the Afro-Asiatic Somali language. The settlement may have evolved in the latter half of the 1800s as a settlement established near a water-stop used by nomadic stock-herders on the way to the town of Zeila or Tadjoura. When Wilfred Thesiger visited Dikhil in May 1934, he was struck by "a most impregnable fort here" recently constructed by the French colonial authorities. "The walls are twenty feet high, loop-holed, and topped with broken glass and a barbed-wire entanglement. There are two large observation towers." He believed that garrison stationed there provided its only economic support, for had "the site any real value it would have been used before this by the natives. In December 1942, British invasion of French Somaliland about 1,000 British troops and Free French troops occupied the town. Following the conclusion of the 1977-1978 Ogaden War, Dikhil, along with Ali Sabieh, accommodated three quarters of the 8,000 Issas who had fled from Ethiopia. In 1979, the first President of independent Djibouti Hassan Gouled Aptidon in Dikhil the party founded the People's Rally for Progress, which has since dominated the politics of Djibouti.