2nd LD: 23 injured in blast targeting Egyptian police building

At least 23 people, among them six policemen, got injured earlier Thursday in a blast that targeted a national security building in Qalioubiya province near Cairo, the Egyptian state TV reported.

A car bomb is behind the blast that damaged the front of the police building, witnesses said.

The sound of the massive explosion was heard in some districts in nearby Cairo and Giza. Eyewitnesses said the blast affected some of the surrounding buildings including a school.

"The blast took place as a bomb-laden car stopped outside the National Security building and its driver left it on a motorbike," the Interior Ministry statement said.

The police department's senior officials, civil protection personnel and bomb experts rushed to the scene after the explosion, The statement said.

Egypt has witnessed anti-government armed attacks that have killed hundreds of police and army men since the military removed former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests.

The crackdown on Morsi's supporters has since killed more than 1,000 of them and injured thousands more, while Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group was blacklisted as "terrorist."

Most of the anti-government attacks were claimed by the "Sinai State" militant group, a Sinai-based affiliate of the Islamic State regional militant group. Endi