CAIRO, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday met with Sergei Naryshkin, chief of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, to discuss security and anti-terror cooperation.
Sisi explained to Naryshkin Egypt's current efforts against terrorism in all strategic axes and directions, said Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Rady in a statement.
"Eliminating terrorism requires uniting efforts of the international community, not differentiating between terrorist groups and working on uprooting the sources of terrorism at all security, military, political and ideological levels," Rady quoted President Sisi as saying during the meeting.
Egypt's ties with Russia have been growing since Sisi came to office a year after he, then the army chief, removed former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to the mass protests against Morsi's one-year rule.
Since Morsi's ouster, Egypt has been facing a wave of terrorism that have killed hundreds of policemen, soldiers and civilians, with most of the attacks claimed by a Sinai-based militant group affiliated with Islamic State (IS).
The IS claimed a Russian plane crash over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in late October 2015 that killed all 224 people on board, mostly Russians.
The attack did not affect Egypt's relations with Russia, which later signed an agreement to build Egypt's first nuclear power plant in Dabaa city of the coastal Matrouh province.
The Egyptian security forces have killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested thousands of suspects during the country's war on terror declared by Sisi following Morsi's ouster.
The Egyptian forces have killed over 50 terrorists and arrested more than 500 suspects in the ongoing massive anti-terror campaign launched on Friday, in the regions including North Sinai, Nile Delta provinces and the western borders with Libya.
Sisi's meeting with Naryshkin came a day after the Egyptian president held talks with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, during which he underlined the importance of boosting Egyptian-U.S. relations and reaffirmed the deep-rooted strategic ties between the two countries.
