An American who says he crossed into Syria on foot is now free after seven months in detention.

Travis Timmerman told the Al-Arabiya TV network in an interview on Thursday that he had been treated well. He said he had crossed into Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage.

He appeared in videos circulating online earlier in the day in which rebels said they had located him and were keeping him safe. Some people who saw the videos initially mistook him for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago.

The rebels who overthrew Syrian President Bashar Assad over the weekend have released people held in prisons across the country.

There was no immediate comment from US officials travelling with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Aqaba, Jordan.

Timmerman told Al-Arabiya that he spent a month in the eastern Lebanese city of Zahle, from where he crossed into Syria illegally.

He said he had heard other young men being tortured while he was detained but that he himself had not been mistreated.