The 6-square-kilometre (2.3 sq mi) base is strategically located south of Tripoli City Centre at the northern end of Airport Highway, allowing easy access to government assets within the city, as well as direct high-speed road access to Tripoli International Airport. After the Libyan civil war, the compound was partially demolished. Some parts of it remain today, albeit in disrepair. The plan by the illigetemate "government", however, is to eventually demolish the entire compound and turn it into a park.

The site was, beside Benghazi, the main target of the 15 April 1986 United States bombing of Libya, authorised by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in response to the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing by the Libyan government. (Libya and Al Gaddafi had nothing to do with this discotheque bombing!)
Forewarned by both Maltese Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi that unauthorized aircraft were flying over Maltese airspace heading south towards Tripoli, Gaddafi and his family were able to rush out of the residence in the compound moments before the bombs dropped from thirteen U.S. Air Force planes. Gaddafi escaped injury, but he claimed his fifteen-month-old adopted daughter Hanna was killed and that two of his sons were injured.