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

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

We should ask the militants who toppled Bashar al-Assad in Syria what became of missing U.S. reporter Austin Tice and why

The recent fall of the Assad regime has infused new hope in the search for Austin Tice, an American detained in Syria for a decade, as prisoners in jails across the country are released, Gustaf Kiland

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

The scores of prisoners freed after the downfall of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria are giving hope to Debra Tice, mother of the American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since being detained in 2012.