The steaming sands of El-Alamein, where German and Alled tanks fought fiercely during the Second World War, are being readied for a boom in tourism, but only once the land mines are cleared.
The potentially lucrative tourism industry on Egypt's north coast is being cautiously developed on one of the most heavily mined bits of real estate in the world.
"We are going to create a space for peace on this war zone," said engineer George Zaki, showing off the verdant man-made hill of the soon-to-be golf course and the spaces allocated for the resort's luxury villas.
But more than half a century after the battles between Allied and Axis troops in the North African desert, mines still pose a threat to local Bedouin residents and a challenge to both tourism and oil exploration.
When construction of the golf resort first began, a bulldozer barely missed an unexploded mine buried 50 centimetres deep in the rocky soil, requiring an intervention by the Egyptian army.
While there are no accurate figures for the number of mines and unexploded ordnance left by the warring parties, Egypt says there are at least 20 million land mines buried in the area of over 3,000 square kilometres.
"Egypt is the country the most affected by this curse," said El-Alamein's mayor, former army general Mustafa Abada. "We will never be able to beat it without the help of the countries who caused it and the United Nations."
There are very few signposts to warn against the munitions, Abada says, because the wartime maps still available are hardly helpful, the mines having moved due to erosion and rain.
Plans to develop Egypt's north coast represent a shift for the government. The pristine beaches were once the sole province of the country's summer vacationers, whose many holiday villages dotting the coast are only used three months of the year.
But the tourism authorities are now seeking to attract foreign investors and turn the area into a year-round resort rivalling the popular Red Sea resorts on the Sinai peninsula.
