According to the foreign ministry, the Croatian hostage named Tomislav Salopek was kidnapped in July.
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He confirmed that attempts have been made already today to confirm the authenticity of the image claiming to show the execution of the hostage.
“I ask people not to share it, not to show it to children”, he added.
And the shot included a pair of Egyptian newspaper reports about Croatia’s support of Egypt in its war against terror and the Kurds in their fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. “A confirmation may not come for several days”.
Late previous year, the US State Department said Croatia had contributed military supplies to the anti-ISIL efforts.
He also appealed for calm.
From his exile in Istanbul, Amr Darrag, a senior Brotherhood figure and former minister, says that “it’s clear the battle against the cancer of extremism in Egypt is being lost”.
The killing also threatened greater peril for foreigners in Egypt, posing a challenge to President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, whose government is trying to lure back foreign investment and tourists driven away by years of political turmoil after the country’s 2011 uprising against President Hosni Mubarak.
In Libya, an Islamic State affiliate also has beheaded its captives.
Spokesman Christophe Barnini told the BBC the company was in talks with its clients “about the level of risk they are willing to take and that we are willing to take”.
France-based seismic survey company CGG said Salopek started working on a project for a sub-contractor of CGG two months ago, AP notes.
In an earlier video, Mr Salopek, kneeling next to a masked militant holding a knife, was forced to read a statement saying his captors would execute him in 48 hours if Cairo failed to release female prisoners, a key demand of Islamist militants over the past two years.
Salopek was abducted last month west of Cairo. “(Egyptian government) detainees be negotiated”.
The militant organisation gave the Egyptian government a 48-hour deadline on Wednesday threatening to kill Salopek if “Muslim women prisoners” in Egyptian jails are not released. But the country’s prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, was due to address the nation later yesterday.
Speaking from the Adriatic city of Split, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic – who was North Atlantic Treaty Organisation assistant secretary general for public diplomacy before taking office last winter – said that Croatian authorities that as long as there is “one little crumb of a chance that Tomislav is alive, we are continuing… the search”.
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Tomislav Salopek, a 30-year-old petroleum engineer, was captured in the Egyptian capital of Cairo last July, Egypt’s foreign ministry said.
