Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Tice's mother his country won't conduct airstrikes near a secret prison outside Damascus.

US officials said Friday that Syria's new leaders had assisted in the hunt for missing journalist Austin Tice, with searches underway at sites of interest.Carstens said up to three more sites of interests have been added recently and that he hoped for thorough searches of all of them.

Nongovernmental workers and journalists have scoured prisons for clues about his fate in the absence of an official American presence in the country.

In the 12 years since Austin Tice was abducted in Syria, his family and his coworkers at McClatchy have grieved at his absence, despaired at silence from the Syrian government and prayed that promises from three U.S. presidents would turn into actions that ...

There are no credible hints of his whereabouts, but also no clear evidence that he is dead, a U.S. official said.

We hold Bashar al-Assad and his criminal regime accountable for the consequences of Austin’s disappearance and the pain inflicted on his mother — pain, tears and separation," a spokesman told NBC News.

The mother of Austin Tice, who was taken captive in Syria in 2012, voiced hope that upheaval in the country will lead to freedom for her son.

Austin Bennett Tice was kidnapped in Damascus, Syria, on Aug. 13, 2012. At the time, he was a freelance American journalist for a variety of publications, most notably those owned by the McClatchy organization. Tice was previously a U.S. Marine Corps ...

The U.S. State Department on Monday said there is no U.S. 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,

Debra Tice, the mother of journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since he was detained in Syria in 2012, said Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that seeing another missing American, Travis Timmerman,

Hostage envoy Roger Carstens is in Syria making the first known in-person U.S. in-person contact with the caretaker government and seeking help in finding missing American Austin Tice.