President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Saturday that Egyptians have only one of two options in the war against terrorism: "either to surrender to terrorism or confront and eliminate it."

President El-Sisi warned that "terrorism is the only weapon capable of destroying a whole society, as happened in some other countries."

El-Sisi's remarks came today during the first session of the Eighth National Youth Conference, titled "Evaluating the experience of combating terrorism locally and regionally."

"Without the existence of states that adopt and sponsor terrorism in order to implement their political interests, the idea of terrorism would not have spread and succeeded in such way," President El-Sisi added.

"The phenomenon of international terrorism is a monster that has become out of the control of those who launched it," El-Sisi said.

"The cost of feeding terrorism is not high, unlike the cost of combating it," El-Sisi said, adding that the technological improvement has made it difficult to identify those responsible for spreading terrorist ideas on the Internet and virtual reality.

"The popular movement in 2011 somehow affected the country's immunity in confronting terrorism," El-Sisi said.

He concluded by saying that "Egypt would never fall in the presence of its army, despite all attempts to destroy it."

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal and a host of ministers and senior officials are attending the conference.

Some 1,600 participants -- most of whom are young people, including university students, youths who worked on El-Sisi’s presidential campaign, engineers working on national projects and entrepreneurs -- are expected to take part in the event, a conference statement said.

The conference is scheduled to comprise three sessions, most notably later Saturday the "Ask the President" session, where President El-Sisi will answer questions from the public.