Cyrenaica the country after the fall of the Gaddafi government. Dr. Abubakr Mustafa Buera, head of the preparatory committee, was then elected first president for the National Federal Block, the first political group to call for federalism. On 6 March 2012 Ahmed al-Senussi, a relative of King Idris, was appointed leader of the self-declared Cyrenaica Transitional Council, a meeting of tribal and military leaders. According to the Council, Cyrenaica extended from the central coastal city of Sirte to the Egyptian border. In October 2013, "transitional" was dropped and the Council was renamed as "Council of Cyrenaica in Libya" (CCL). According to
Tripoli passed into the hands of the rulers of Cyrenaica (a Greek colony on the North African shore, east of Tripoli, halfway to Egypt), although the Carthaginians later wrested it from the Greeks. By the latter half of the 2nd century BC it belonged to the Romans, who included it in their province of Africa, and gave it the name of "Regio Syrtica". Around the beginning of the 3rd century AD, it became known as the Regio Tripolitana, meaning "region of the three cities", namely Oea ("i.e.", modern Tripoli), Sabratha and Leptis Magna. It was probably raised to the rank of