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.

AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus laughs as she attends a swimming event at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, August 21, 2004. Niedringhaus, a veteran Associated Press photographer who had covered wars around the world was shot dead and another reporter was wounded on April 4, 2014 when an Afghan policeman opened fire on them in eastern Afghanistan, the news agency said. (Photo by Reuters/Staff)

A photograph of a girl carrying a baby on the spot of the previous day's car bomb attack that killed killed and wounded hundreds at the Sadriyah market in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 19, 2007, is inserted into the scene at the same location on Monday, March 20, 2023, 20 years after the U.S. led invasion on Iraq and subsequent war. (Photo by Hadi Mizban/AP Photo)

Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

Medics carry a wounded person at the scene after an attack at a popular nightclub in Istanbul, early Sunday, January 1, 2017. Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin said that an armed assailant has opened fire at a nightclub in Istanbul during New Year's celebrations. Turkish authorities have banned distribution of images relating to the Istanbul attack within Turkey. (Photo by IHA via AP Photo)

A bloodied man who carried dead and wounded, speaks on the phone at the site of a suicide attack an explosion that struck a protest march, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, July 23, 2016. Witnesses in Kabul say that an explosion causing multiple casualties struck the march by members of Afghanistan’s largely Shiite Hazara ethnic minority group, who were demanding that a major regional electric power line be routed through their impoverished home province. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

Gunfire was brought to the steps of President Truman's Washington home, Blair House, as two assassins tried to kill the chief executive, November 1, 1950. One of the gunmen, Oscar Collazzo of New York, lay wounded at the bottom of Blair House's front steps after the president's police guard had finished their work, at the cost of one guards' life, Dec. 9, 1950. The second gunman was killed. (Photo by Harvey Georges/AP Photo)

People help a wounded person after Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, attacked people with a knife during a gay pride parade in Jerusalem on Thursday, July 30, 2015. Schlissel lunged into a group of revelers leading Jerusalem's annual gay pride parade and stabbed several of them Thursday evening as they marched in the holy city, Israeli police and witnesses said. (Photo by Sebastian Scheiner/AP Photo)