Kayla Mueller was not the last U.S. hostage in Syria

(Image credit: Twitter.com/AAhronheim)

published 11 February 2015

Despite reports that Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage in Syria, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday that there is at least one hostage being held in the region.

Earnest would not name names, and did not say if the person was being held by ISIS or another group. Several Americans have gone missing in Syria over the past four years, New York reports, including Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who was kidnapped in 2012. It is believed that Tice was at first held by Bashar al-Assad's forces, but his current whereabouts are unknown. His family, hoping to bring attention to his plight, began to use the hashtag #FreeAustinTice on Twitter Tuesday.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.