A hostage rescue operator in Syria told Fox News Digital he believes Marine veteran Austin Tice is alive and has hope that he will be found soon.

The high-level delegation arrived to engage in talks with Syria's interim leadership, the State Department confirmed early Friday.

Hostage envoy Roger Carstens traveled to Syria Friday, making the first known U.S. in-person contact with the caretaker government, and seeking help in finding missing American Austin Tice.

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

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

We hold Bashar al-Assad and his criminal regime accountable for the consequences of Austin’s disappearance and the pain inflicted on his mother — pain, tears and separation," a spokesman told NBC News.

The mother of Austin Tice, who was taken captive in Syria in 2012, voiced hope that upheaval in the country will lead to freedom for her son.

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

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

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

US group Hostage Aid Worldwide said Tuesday that it believes journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, is still alive, though it did not offer concrete information on his whereabouts.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has led to the freeing of tens of thousands of prisoners from the country’s brutal and byzantine prison system. Desperate family members continue to search for many more people who went missing since repression of an anti-government uprising triggered a horrific civil war in 2011.