The Egyptian prime minister has formally designated the Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist organisation”.
Hazem el-Beblawi accused the group of a suicide bomb attack that ripped through a police station in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura on Tuesday.
The now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood condemned the attack and denies any links to violence or to Sinai-based extremist groups.
An Islamist militant group based in Sinai, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, said it carried out the blast which killed 16 and wounded about 140.
Militant attacks intensified amid a clampdown by security forces after President Mohamed Mursi, who belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, was deposed in July.
All of the group’s activities are now banned, including public demonstrations.
Meanwhile former Egyptian PM Hisham Qandil has been transferred to a prison in the south of Cairo following his arrest yesterday. Qandil will serve a year in prison for failing to execute a court verdict.
