Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet that he wished Syrian forces had not shot down a Turkish jet last month and that he would not allow the tensions between the two countries to turn into open combat.
"We learned that it [the plane] belonged to Turkey after shooting it down. I say 100 per cent 'if only we had not shot it down'," the Cumhuriyet newspaper quoted Assad as saying in an interview published on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear when the interview was conducted. [Reuters]
Protests in Syria have escalated into what some are calling a burgeoning civil war. The UN says several thousand people have died since the uprising began in March last year. The government blames "terrorists" and "armed gangs" for the unrest and says more than 2,500 members of its security forces have been killed.
