Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he regrets the shooting-down of a Turkish jet by his forces, and he will not allow tensions with its neighbor to deteriorate into an "armed conflict", a Turkish newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"I would have wished 100 percent that we had not attacked it," he said as an explanation of his military's action in an interview with a Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, two weeks after the F-4 Phantom jet was shot at and crashed into the Mediterranean off Syria.

According to Syria it flew very low inside its airspace, but Turkey said the jet was hit in international airspace after it briefly strayed into Syria.