in the Gaza Strip, civil defense announces the death of twenty-eight people due to Israeli strikes

The United States “work” with the new Syrian authorities to try to find American journalist Austin Tice, missing in Syria since 2012, a diplomat who was part of an American delegation who visited Damascus announced to the press on Friday.

“More locations are to be searched in the coming days, weeks and months, and we will work with the interim authorities (…) for the permanent return of Austin Tice and other Americans disappeared under the Assad regime »declared Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy in charge of hostage affairs, specifying that he was also looking for Majd Kamalmaz, a Syrian-American psychologist who has been missing since 2017.

Austin Tice, 43, who worked for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, Washington PostCBS and other media outlets when he was arrested in 2012 at a checkpoint in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, before disappearing. Then aged 31, he appeared in a video in September 2012, blindfolded. But the identity of his captors remains unknown to this day and little information has been made public since his kidnapping.

The journalists' defense organization Reporters Without Borders has been calling for his release for years and has particularly asked the American authorities to spare no effort to secure his release. In 2022, American President Joe Biden affirmed that the United States had the « certitude » that the journalist was “held by the Syrian regime”and assured that he had requested his release.