CAIRO – The Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State said on Wednesday that it had beheaded Tomislav Salopek, a 30-year-old Croatian expatriate worker who was taken from his car on the outskirts of Cairo last month.
The claim, if confirmed, would represent the first time that the militant group, Sinai Province, had abducted and killed a foreigner during two years of attacks against the government.
A photograph posted Wednesday on a Twitter account associated with Sinai Province appeared to show Salopek, beheaded and lying in the desert with a knife planted in the sand beside him.
Croatia’s prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, speaking Wednesday in Zagreb, the capital, said his government could not confirm the death of Salopek “with 100 percent certainty.” But there seemed little doubt about the identity of the victim.
The gruesome photograph evoked the brutal execution videos disseminated by the Islamic State, suggesting that the Egyptian militants were emulating the tactics of the parent organization.
That would represent a major shift in strategy for Sinai Province, which had largely framed its violent campaign as a response to government brutality and had focused most of its attacks on the military and police.
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.
Coming a few days after the government held a lavish celebration for the opening of a new channel of the Suez Canal, it also appeared timed to undermine el-Sissi.
After killing hundreds of soldiers and police officers over the past two years, Egyptian militants have recently mounted more ambitious assaults on the military and, increasingly, attacks on civilian targets.
Sinai Province is the most active of a number of militant groups that have emerged since the military takeover of the government and ouster of its Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013.
