A car bomb detonated near Turkey’s border with Syria on Friday, killing two Syrians and critically injuring a third inside the vehicle.
The blast went off inside the vehicle at about 2,460 feet meters from a local government office in the neighboring town of Reyhanli, according to the Anadolu Agency, also adding that two people were also wounded as a result of the explosion. The Turkish news agency stated several ambulances and police vehicles were sent to the scene.
“It is clear that there was a bomb inside the vehicle,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The findings at the moment indicated that it was more linked to terrorism… Our colleagues are looking into who was behind this.”
Erdogan, however, did not say the number of injuries that was caused by the explosion, but Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said that the blast was caused by a hand-made bomb which set-off while the car was in transit.
In May 2013, twin car bomb attacks in Reyhanli took the lives of 52 people, including Syrian refugees. The Turkish government blamed Syria’s intelligence agency for what was one of the deadliest attacks in their modern history.
In 2015 and 2016, Turkey was also badly hit by a series of attacks blamed on ISIS and Kurdish militants that left 300 dead.