Libya plans to build a pilot city near the mausoleum of the Libyan martyr, Omar Mokhtar, in the north eastern town of Seloug, officials said. Engineers in charge of implementing the pilot city project, which will be built on an area of 681 hectares, have indicated that it will comprise 5,000 houses, including 3,928 villas and 34 four-storey buildings. The project will also include public service buildings, notably crèches, basic, secondary and vocational schools, health assistance units, a hospital, a university, a conference centre, a sporting club, community halls, a post office, a market, an administrative complex, a central library, a popular security centre, a civil protection station and a petrol station.

Streets, sanitation, communication, electric power, water and gas facilities are also part of the project. The building works entrusted to the South Korean company "Hyundai" will start in September 2007 and 2,000 houses will be completed by the 40th anniversary of the 1st September Revolution in 2009. Land clearing, which concern also the promotion and improvement of Omar Mokhtar's mausoleum, have already started. The secretary of the Libyan People's General Committee for Housing has, on that occasion, indicated that the promotion works in the area, where the mausoleum is located, consist in the building of a museum on the Libyan Jihad, especially that of the oldest Martyr and epitomising sufferings endured by Libyans in the concentration camps in the Italian colonial rule.

He has also said that the pilot city's housing project has been designed in accordance with the specimen of the Libyan house, which matches the country's culture and social life.