Car explosion (illustration)
Car explosion (illustration)Thinkstock

An explosion rocked the area near Egypt's High Court of Justice in central Cairo on Tuesday night, government officials have confirmed.

According to Al Jazeera, Brigadier General Abdel Fattah Othman, a spokesman for the ministry of interior, said nine civilians were injured in the blast. Most of the injuries were minor, he said.

Bomb experts were on the ground to investigate the blast, media reports said.

"It was not a car bomb. It was a homemade explosive device," Othman was quoted as having told Nile TV, adding that the blast damaged a number of shops.

He added that the device was placed near a private car that was parked near an adjacent metro station.

The explosion is the latest in a long series of attacks that have hit Egypt since the 2013 ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi.

In July, a bomb blast in a train in the Egyptian city of Alexandria wounded five people.

The Sinai Peninsula has been particularly hit by terror attacks, which started shortly after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak and have only increased since Morsi’s ouster.

Many of the attacks in Egypt have been claimed by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, and Tuesday night’s bombing came hours after Egyptian security forces discovered and destroyed a large factory for manufacturing rockets belonging to the group.

Since Morsi's ouster after a turbulent year in power, at least 1,400 people, mostly his Islamist supporters, have been killed in street clashes and more than 15,000 have been imprisoned.