Assad regrets downing jet

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said on Tuesday that he regretted his country’s defence forces shooting down a Turkish fighter jet on June 22, but insisted the plane was in Syrian airspace.

“I would have wished 100 per cent that we had not attacked it,” he said two weeks after the F-4 Phantom jet on a training mission was shot at and crashed into the Mediterranean . “The plane was flying in an air corridor used three times in the past by the Israeli Air Force,” Mr. Assad said an interview with a Turkish newspaper, Cumhuriyet . — AFP