Somali internal security minister,  Abdel El-Razaq Mohamed has discussed with Egypt’s Minister of Interior Magdy Abdel Ghaafar on bilateral cooperation in fighting terrorism.

The Somali internal  security minster, showed interest in expanding the benefit gained by the Somali police from Egyptian interior ministry expertise.

Both the Egyptian and Somali governments are fighting domestic terrorist and extremists groups.

The Somali government has been fighting Al-Shabab movement, an extremist Islamist movement, for more than two decades.

Al-Shabab won control of almost all of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in 2006, and held large swathes of central and southern Somalia until a UN-backed force from the African Union — including soldiers from neighbouring Kenya and Uganda — pushed the militants out of the capital in 2011.

The movement still controls many rural areas in Somalia where it imposes strict Sharia law.

In 2012, Al-Shabab and Al-Qaeda announced their alliance.

Egypt has been combating a decade-long militant insurgency in North Sinai that has intensified in the past two years.