Cairo Map

At least eight people were wounded in an explosion near a top court building in central Cairo today, security sources said.

They said the blast occurred in front of the main gate of the building, which houses the office of the prosecutor general. Of the wounded, six were policemen and two were civilians.

The public prosecutor was inside the building at the time of the blast, they sources added, and had since left to inspect the scene of the attack.

While most of the worst attacks in Egypt have hit the Sinai Peninsula, a remote but strategic region bordering Gaza that is a hotbed of Islamist militants, smaller blasts have become increasingly common in Cairo and other cities.

Last Thursday there were four bomb attacks in Cairo. One person was killed and two were wounded in one of the attacks outside a restaurant in the residential Imbaba district of the capital, the Interior Ministry said.

© Thomson Reuters 2015