WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. officials are pushing hard to learn as much as they can about Austin Tice, the American journalist captured in Syria 12 years ago, White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday.
Kirby told reporters the situation in Syria could “present an opportunity for us to glean more information about him, his whereabouts, his condition,” adding that U.S. officials assumed Tice was alive and had no information to the contrary.
Tice, a former U.S. Marine and a freelance journalist, was 31 when he was abducted in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted by Syrian rebels who seized the capital Damascus on Sunday. Syria had denied he was being held.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Jarrett Renshaw and Katharine Jackson)
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