US loses contact with drone that Syria claims to have shot down

The United States lost contact with an unarmed Predator drone over Syria on Tuesday, U.S. officials said, stopping short of confirming the plane was taken down by Syrian air defenses, as reported by Syrian state media.

Tuesday's incident took place sometime around 7:40 pm in Syria, when the United States lost contact with an unarmed MQ-1 Predator aircraft operating over northwest Syria, a U.S. official told Reuters.

Syria's state news agency SANA made a brief statement regarding the U.S. drone. "Syrian air defenses brought down a hostile U.S. surveillance plane in northern Latakia," SANA said in a bulletin, without giving further details.

A second U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the aircraft took off from a base in Turkey and a third official confirmed it was operating over Latakia province.

A fourth U.S. official said the aircraft was destroyed but U.S. officials were not ready to say what happened — much less whether Assad's forces might have engaged the aircraft. They said the cause of the incident was unclear.

"At this time, we have no information to corroborate press reports that the aircraft was shot down," said the first U.S. official, who asked to be described by Reuters only as a defense official.

"We are looking into the incident and will provide more details when available."

It was the first such incident since the U.S.-led coalition began carrying out air strikes against the armed group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) last summer.

If confirmed, it would be the first American aircraft to go down over Syria since then.

U.S. officials have previously described Syrian skies as relatively calm, noting that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad had not taken aim at coalition aircraft flying over its territory. The U.S. airstrikes have not targeted Assad's forces or military infrastructure.

Damascus has said it was given prior warning before the coalition began the strikes, and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said last year that Washington had pledged its raids would not hit the Syrian army.

The strikes in Syria have largely been focused on Aleppo and Raqqa provinces, where the ISIL has strongholds. In December, a Jordanian jet crashed near Raqqa where the ISIL captured the pilot and later burned him alive.

But the campaign has also targeted the group elsewhere, and hit positions believed to belong to fighters affiliated with al-Nusra Front.

ISIL fighters have been largely absent from Latakia, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor.

But al-Nusra fighters are active in the province, which is home to the Assad family's ancestral village and is a bastion of the Alawite sect of Shia Islam to which the president belongs.

Wire services