(CNN) -- Syria's besieged leader says he regrets that his soldiers shot down a Turkish jet last month but said they thought the plane belonged to Israel. "I would not wish it for any plane other than an enemy one. Especially for a Turkish plane, I say 100%, if only we did not shoot it down," President Bashar al-Assad told Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper in an interview published Tuesday. "The Turkish people are our brothers and something that would make them sad would never make me happy and it did not. If this was an Israeli plane, of course, I would have been happy."
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NEW: The Tuesday death toll stands at 71, an opposition group said
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Bashar al-Assad: Israeli planes have used the same corridor where Turkish jet was downed
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Al-Assad: Turkey's prime minister wants to stir up animosities
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Envoy Kofi Annan's spokesman says forging peace will be "a long, bumpy road"
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