Damascus, Syria - Syria's new leadership said Thursday it was searching for abducted US journalist Austin Tice and had secured the release of another American it said had been held by Bashar al-Assad's ousted government.

In 2022, President Joe Biden accused Syria of holding Tice, a freelance photojournalist detained near Damascus a decade earlier, and demanded that the government of Bashar al-Assad release him.

The transitional government, which took the helm in Syria after Assad's ouster on Sunday, said that "the search for American citizen Austin Tice is ongoing."

"We confirm our readiness to cooperate directly with the US administration to search for American citizens disappeared by the former Assad regime," the transitional government's department of political affairs added in a statement on Telegram.

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Tice was working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS, and other media outlets when he was detained at a checkpoint in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, on August 14, 2012.

Last week, his mother, Debra, told reporters her son is believed to be alive and is being "treated well," without providing further details.

In recent days, Syrian residents and armed men have broken into government prisons, freeing inmates, some of whom have spent decades behind bars.

The transitional government's statement said that another US citizen, Travis Timmerman, "has been released and secured."

Residents of the Al-Zyabiyeh neighborhood of Damascus said they had found Timmerman wandering around without shoes.

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"The municipality guard Mousa Rifai found him, so we brought him to our house and fed him and he slept for about an hour," Ziyad Nedda said. "He was held in the Palestine Branch, he wouldn't stop saying it. 'I was held in the Palestine Branch in Damascus.'"

The Palestine Branch, also known as Branch 235, was a prison operated by the Syrian intelligence services under Assad.

Timmerman was last seen in Budapest, Hungary, in early June.

The 29-year-old's sister, Pixie Rogers, described his release as a "huge Christmas present" and said she "can't wait for that day" she is reunited with her brother.

Timmerman's mother "is very, very ecstatic... overwhelmed, and just beyond super excited with this information that we got today," Rogers told CBS.