REYHANLI/HATAY
Turkish interior minister said nine people have been detained in connection with two powerful car bomb blasts in a Turkish town near the Syrian border that killed at least 46 people and wounded more than 100 others on Saturday.
Speaking in a press conference on Sunday, Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler told reporters, "I am saying it very clearly that the attacks were carried out by a terrorist group closely linked to the Syrian mukhabarat," Arabic word for intelligence that refer to spy agencies.
"Some of them are the ones have made reconnaissance and ones have hidden the vehicles," Guler said.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said the suspects' involvement in the attacks were determined "through their testimonies and confessions."
He said authorities had identified so far 38 people who died in the blasts, adding three of them were Syrian nationals.
Turkish Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu said 55 people were still at hospitals with two of them were in critical condition.
The double bomb attacks in the Reyhanli town mounted fears that Syria's more than two-year-old conflict increasingly risked spillover to neighboring countries.
The devastation from blasts, which took place 15 minutes apart at a crowded shopping district and outside a post office in the southern town just across Syria's Idlib province, was so huge that it ripped through entire buildings and left hulks of twisted metal and charred skeletons from cars scattered over the streets.
