Syria’s new authorities have agreed to help the United States locate and return Americans who went missing in the war-torn country, a US envoy said on Sunday.
“The new Syrian government has agreed to assist the USA in locating and returning USA citizens or their remains,” US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack wrote on X, describing it as a “powerful step forward”.
“The families of Austin Tice, Majd Kamalmaz, and Kayla Mueller must have closure,” he added, referring to American citizens who had gone missing or been killed during Syria’s devastating civil war that erupted in 2011.
US-Syria relations have steadily improved since former president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in an Islamist-led offensive in December, ending more than a decade of diplomatic freeze.
Tice was working as a freelance journalist for Agence France-Presse, The Washington Post, and other outlets when he was detained at a checkpoint in August 2012.
Kamalmaz, a Syrian-American psychotherapist, was believed to have died after being detained under the Assad government in 2017.
Mueller was an aid worker kidnapped by the Islamic State group, which announced her death in February 2015, saying she was killed in a Jordanian air strike, a claim disputed by US authorities.