The US State Department on Monday said there is no US government organization currently on the ground in Syria for the search of Austin Tice, an American journalist taken captive during a reporting trip in August 2012, but did not rule out the possibility.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters at a regular news briefing that the US was continuing to try and locate Tice, but did not have specific information about his whereabouts.
When asked why the US has still not yet sent a delegation to Syria, Miller said: "I'm not ruling out that we won't send personnel to Damascus. Stay tuned over the coming days."
Tice, a former US Marine, is the focus of a massive search following the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after 13 years of civil war.
Opposition factions, led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have released thousands of people from prisons in Damascus where Assad held political opponents, ordinary civilians and foreigners.
Miller added that the US government over the past week has had communications with HTS that have in part been largely focused on getting help to find Tice.
"We have a number of people engaged on trying to find Austin Tice and bring him home, and we communicated directly to HTS that anything that they could do to help us find him, we would greatly appreciate, and they committed to do that," Miller said.
"We do not have specific information about where he is. We continue to work to try to locate him."
US President Joe Biden said earlier this month the US government believes Tice is alive.
Tice, who worked as a freelance reporter for the Washington Post and McClatchy, was one of the first US journalists to make it into Syria after the outbreak of the civil war.
In August 2012, while traveling through the Damascus suburb of Daraya, he was taken captive. Weeks later, a YouTube video was published showing Tice blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.
On Friday, Reuters was first to report that Tice in 2013 managed to slip out of his cell and was seen moving between houses in the streets of Damascus' upscale Mazzeh neighborhood.
