CAIRO: Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi has declared the country’s Muslim Brotherhood movement a “terrorist” organization, state news agency MENA reported Tuesday, quoting the premier’s spokesman.

Beblawi’s remarks came just hours after a car bomb ripped through a police headquarters in the city of Mansoura, north of Cairo, killing at least 14 people, mostly policemen.

Scores more were wounded in the attack, medics and officials said.

“Prime Minister Beblawi has declared the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization,” MENA quoted the premier’s spokesman Sherif Showky as saying.

The Brotherhood, however, condemned the bomb attack.

“The Muslim Brotherhood condemns in the strongest possible terms the attack on the police headquarters in Mansoura (region),” an e-mailed statement from the group’s London press office said.

“The Muslim Brotherhood considers this act as a direct attack on the unity of the Egyptian people and demands an enquiry forthwith so that the perpetrators of this crime may be brought to justice.”

The powerful blast tore through the police leaving victims buried under rubble in the deadliest bombing yet in a months-long wave of violence blamed on militants.

Investigators were trying to determine whether the blast, soon after midnight in the city of Mansoura, was from a car bomb or from explosives planted around the building. The explosion left a downtown street of the city strewn with piles of debris and charred cars.

Egypt’s Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim toured the scene of the explosion at daybreak, pledging that the police will “continue their battle against the dark terrorist forces that tried to tamper with the country’s security,” then went to hospital to visit the wounded.

“This is a regrettable, horrible attack and whoever carried it out is not human,” Ibrahim told reporters.

An official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the bomb could have been planted outside the building, saying no traces of a bomb vehicle or the explosive device itself had been found yet.

The same building had been targeted in July, when an explosive planted outside killed a policeman and wounded another.