Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted saying yesterday that Damascus had apologised over a Turkish fighter jet crash.

“Syria immediately offered a very serious apology for the incident and admitted it was a mistake”, Mr Erdogan said.

“Luckily our pilots are alive, we have just lost a plane,” the Prime Minister reportedly added.

The incident prompted the government to call an emergency security summit led by Mr Erdogan.

There was no explanation as to why Damascus should apologise for a crash, unless its forces had shot down the Turkish F-4 or harried it.

Meanwhile, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan urged world powers to increase pressure on both sides in the conflict, which monitors say has cost more than 15,000 lives.

“It’s time for countries of influence to raise the level of pressure on the parties on the ground and to persuade them to stop the killing and start the talking,” he said.

Monitors said regime forces fired on demonstrators in Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo, killing at least eight people, with another killed in the province of the same name.

The Syrian regime accused rebels yesterday of carrying out a “brutal massacre” of 25 of its supporters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most were members of the feared shabiha militia.

Amateur video posted on YouTube and distributed by the Observatory showed piles of mangled bodies of young men, their clothing soaked in blood.