Syria says this is the US Predator drone it shot down on Tuesday (VIDEO)

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and US President Barack Obama are not friends. If anyone had forgotten, we got a reminder on Tuesday. 

Assad has tolerated US and coalition air strikes against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, and though the US military denies collaborating with Syrian government forces, sources in Damascas say they get warning from third-parties in Iraq. 

So far, the uneasy alliance has worked out. The United States has been bombing IS targets in Syria since September 2014 and Syrian forces hasn't fired on US aircraft.

That changed March 17, when Syrian forces shot down a surveillance drone they later identified as an unarmed US Predator.

A source in Syria told Reuters that the drone had been flying over a region where IS wasn't active. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the drone was shot down around 6 miles north of the the Latakia, a coastal city in eastern Syria far from IS positions.

"Our air defense brought it down with a rocket," the Syrian source said. "The plane was American-made, was brought down coming from the sea, and the Syrian air defense was the one that brought it down."

US defense officials admitted to the press that they'd lost a drone over Syria, but didn't say under what conditions.

"US military controllers lost contact with a US MQ-1 Predator unarmed remotely piloted aircraft operating over northwest Syria," a US defense official told AFP. "At this time, we have no information to corroborate press reports that the aircraft was shot down. We are looking into the incident and will provide more details when available."

SANA, Syria's state news agency, made the announcement on Tuesday. It followed up with this video that appears to show the wreckage. GlobalPost has not independently confirmed its authenticity. Neither have US officials.

The incident happened just two days after US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about the need to negotiatewith Assad over his role in his country's ongoing civil war. Some critics said he and the Obama administration seem to have softened their position about those negotiations after months of battling a common enemy.

Maybe shooting down a drone might change the tone.