Kazakh girls watch as the Russian Soyuz TMA-15 rocket carrying Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko readies for take-off from the Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan on May 27, 2009. Three astronauts, from Canada, Belgium and Russia, blasted off for the International Space Station in a landmark mission that will double its crew to six for the first time. (Photo by Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP Photo)

Passengers embrace each other at the entrance to Istanbul's Ataturk airport, early Wednesday, June 29, 2016 following their evacuation after a blast. Suspected Islamic State group extremists have hit the international terminal of Istanbul's Ataturk airport, killing dozens of people and wounding many others, Turkish officials said Tuesday. (Photo by Emrah Gurel/AP Photo)

Takeoka Chisaka, Hiroshima, Japan. “One morning in August 1945, I was walking home from the night shift at a factory in Hiroshima. As I reached my door, there was a huge explosion. When I came to, my head was bleeding and I had been blasted 30m away. The atomic bomb had detonated. When I found my mother, her eyes were badly burned. A doctor said they had to come out, but he didn’t have the proper tools so used a knife instead. It was hellish. I became a peace-worker after the war. In the 1960s, at a meeting at the UN, I met one of the people who created the atomic bomb. He apologised”. (Photo and caption by Sasha Maslov)

A statue of a woman made out of glass and rubble that resulted from the Beirut port mega explosion August 04, is placed opposite to the site of the blast in the Lebanese capital's harbour to mark the one year anniversary of the beginning of the anti-government protest movement across the country on October 20, 2020. Hundreds marched in Beirut on the weekend to mark the first anniversary of a non-sectarian protest movement that has rocked the political elite but has yet to achieve its goal of sweeping reform. (Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP Photo)

Policemen take pictures of the Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft while it is transported from an assembling hangar to its launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, July 20, 2015. The Soyuz is scheduled to blast off with Kjell Lindgren of the U.S., Kimiya Yui of Japan and Oleg Kononenko of Russia to the International Space Station on July 23, 2015. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

This handout picture released by the Gagarin Cosmonauts' Training Centre on October 17, 2023 shows Marina Vasilevskaya (L) flying during a parabolic flight aboard a zero-gravity simulator, a Russian IL-76 MDK aircraft used for cosmonauts' training flights in weightlessness, in Star City outside Moscow. (Photo by Pavel Shvets/Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center/AFP Photo)

Birds fly over the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, western Japan July 29, 2015. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing about 140,000 by the end of the year in a city of 350,000 residents, in the world's first nuclear attack. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Influenced by the shadows scorched into outdoor surfaces by the heat of the blasts 70 years ago, Reuters photographer Issei Kato pays homage to survivors, residents and historic buildings in both cities in a personal project that captures the shadows of today. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

In one of the deadliest attacks in Turkey in recent years, two car bombs exploded near the border with Syria on Saturday, killing 43 and wounding 140 others. Turkish officials blamed the attack on a group linked to Syria, and a deputy prime minister called the neighboring country's intelligence service and military "the usual suspects."

The blasts, which were 15 minutes apart and hit the town of Reyhanli's busiest street, raised fears that Turkey could increasingly be drawn into Syria's brutal civil war.

Turkey already hosts Syria's political opposition and rebel commanders, has given shelter to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and in the past retaliated against Syrian shells that landed in Turkey.