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A US citizen freed from prison in Syria has been identified as Travis Timmerman, following much speculation and reports that he was in fact Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in the country over 12 years ago.

Timmerman, 29, told that he was imprisoned in Syria for seven months after crossing into the country from Lebanon. He identified himself as a religious "pilgrim" and said he was being "well treated". He had been held in a prison in Dhiyabia, a town south of the capital of Damascus.

Timmerman told CBS News that he had been trying to make his way out of Syria since he heard the reports of the Assad regime falling.Ìý

He said two men, with hammers, broke down his prison door on Monday, waking him up.

"I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the warfare could have been more active than it ended up being…once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting" he said.

He added that he "had a few moments of fear", when he was freed, but has since been more worried about finding somewhere to sleep.

that surfaced online overnight detailing a US citizen being freed from prison sparked speculation that it was Tice, who has been missing since 2012.

Tice, 43, is a freelance journalist thought to have been captured near Damascus while reporting on the war shortly after his 31st birthday.

have said they are "incredibly hopeful" that he will be returned safely following the overthrow of the Assad regime.

US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that Washington believes that they "could get him back" and that Assad should be "held accountable" for his disappearance.

Thousands of people have been freed from prisons in Syria since Assad’s ouster, revealing nightmarish conditions, horrific abuses of detainees, and mass executions.

Videos online have shown prisoners being freed from the Saydnaya prison—dubbed the "human slaughterhouse"—some of them after suffering years of torture in underground cells.

The fall of the Assad regime came after Syrian rebels, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, began a rapid offensive in northwest Syria in late November, sweeping through large swathes of the country.