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Two American citizens who had been missing for days have been released in Damascus after being detained by Syrian authorities, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday.
The Syrian foreign ministry said earlier that authorities were questioning Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23, for entering the country illegally. The pair had been reported missing by the U.S. embassy in Lebanon on Wednesday.
The Americans were released into the custody of the U.S. embassy in Damascus on Thursday after U.S. charge d'affaires Maura Connelly was summoned to the Syrian foreign ministry, said State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid.
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"They are now in the U.S. embassy in Damascus and are reportedly in good shape," Duguid said.
He said he had no details of any charges against the pair or whether they would be allowed to leave Syria. They were making contact with their families, he said.
The Syrian foreign ministry said the pair had worked for the Jordan Times newspaper based in Amman and had entered Syria illegally through the northern border.
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut said on Wednesday there had been no word from the Americans since Oct. 1, when they left Beirut for the northern city of Tripoli. They were then to cross by land to Syria before returning to Jordan.
Lebanese media have speculated that they may have fallen victim to kidnappers in the north, where Syria has warned of growing Islamist militancy and the Lebanese army has been the target of two bomb attacks in the last two months.
The U.S. embassy in Beirut last week warned citizens of a security threat in Lebanon in the first half of October, linking the heightened risk to the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.
Chmela and Luck arrived in Lebanon on Sept. 29 from the Jordanian capital on vacation and told a friend on Oct. 1 that they were traveling from Beirut to Tripoli through the coastal town of Byblos that day, the embassy statement said.
They then planned to cross by land into Syria before returning to Jordan on Saturday, the embassy said.
Tripoli is a predominantly Sunni Muslim city where militants and Islamic fundamentalists are known to be active. It has witnessed sectarian fighting in the past few months as well as two car bombs targeting Lebanese troops that killed 25 people and left dozens others wounded.
Taylor, who is from the Chicago area, has been a reporter at the Jordan Times for the past 18 months. Chmela, whose last U.S. home was in Washington D.C., worked as an intern at the English-language daily for three months before leaving the job several weeks ago, the paper's chief editor, Samir Barhoumeh, said.
Taylor, who speaks Arabic, planned to go to visit the Syrian city of Aleppo after passing through Lebanon, Barhmoumeh told The Associated Press, adding that as far as he knows Taylor did not enter Syria. Taylor's mother called Barhoumeh on Saturday expressing concern, saying her son has not used his credit card since Oct. 1, Barhoumeh said
