Battle of El Agheila into Tunisia. The 7th Armoured Division entered Tripoli on the night of and the reached the Mareth line, another west, on 23 January. Battle of El Agheila The Battle of El Agheila was a brief engagement of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. It took place in December 1942 between Allied forces of the Eighth Army (General Bernard Montgomery) and the Axis forces of the German-Italian "Panzer" Army ("Generalfeldmarschall" Erwin Rommel), during the long Axis withdrawal from El Alamein to Tunis. It ended with the German-Italian "Panzer" Army resuming its retreat towards Tunisia, where the Tunisia Campaign
First Battle of El Alamein constantly in short supply, while a shortage of transport impeded the distribution of the supplies that the Axis forces did have. Rommel's plan was for the 90th Light Division and the 15th and 21st "Panzer" divisions of the "Afrika Korps" to penetrate the Eighth Army lines between the Alamein box and Deir el Abyad (which he believed was defended). The 90th Light Division was then to veer north to cut the coastal road and trap the defenders of the Alamein box (which Rommel thought was occupied by the remains of the 50th Infantry Division) and the "Afrika Korps" would veer