A video has gone viral over the past hours, allegedly showing the murder of an Israeli-Canadian businessman, Ziv Kipper, in the Egyptian city of Alexandria earlier this week.
In the footage, the shooter pointed a gun at Kipper and shouted in Arabic, "Shalom from Gaza's children," before firing eight shots that instantly killed Kipper as he was sitting behind the wheel of his car.
'Shalom' is a Hebrew word idiomatically used to mean "hello" or "goodbye".
The incident, which took place on Tuesday, is believed to have been triggered by Israel's ongoing war on the Gaza Strip that has claimed so far the lives of almost 35,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children.
The video in question ended with credits to a limitedly-known illegal armed militant group named "the Vanguards of Liberation — the Group of Martyr Mohamed Salah," which had earlier claimed responsibility for Kipper's murder.
The slain man had reportedly been living and working in Egypt for almost nine years, entering the country using his Canadian passport; he was the CEO of O.K. Group LLC, a company that exports frozen fruits and vegetables, according to his LinkedIn account and Israeli news outlets.
Egypt's Interior Ministry did not officially refer to the victim as an Israeli national.
In an unverified statement, the militant group alleged that Kipper was an Israeli spy using his business as a cover for his espionage activities, which included the recruitment of agents to spy on Egypt for Israeli intelligence – the Mossad.
The group names itself after Mohamed Salah, a security force member serving along the Egyptian border with Israel believed to be involved in killing three Israeli soldiers in June last year after he had entered Israel's territories and then killed during a firefight.
Cairo-based Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper reported on Wednesday that the alleged perpetrator, as well as others who may be involved in Kipper's murder, have been held in custody and interrogated.
The identities of the suspects remain unknown till the publication time.
The incident came almost a day after the Israeli army had launched military ground operations in eastern Rafah, seizing control of the Rafah Border Crossing, Gaza's only connection to humanitarian aid through Egypt's North Sinai province, which outraged Egyptians nationwide.
Over 1.5 million displaced Palestinians of Gaza's population of almost 2.3 million have taken refuge in the Palestinian Rafah City.
The homicide of the Israeli national is the second similar incident taking place in Alexandria in seven months. In October 2023, a low-ranking Egyptian police officer opened fire randomly at a group of Israeli tourists in Alexandria at a tourist site in the city, killing two Israelis and a local tour guide in reaction to the war on Gaza, a move which divided Egyptians for days over the legitimacy of killing civilians regardless of their nationality.
Despite a technical state of peace with Israel since the late 1970s, the Egyptian public has been at loggerheads with their country's successive regimes over normalisation.
Diplomatically and commercially, Cairo has been treating the self-proclaimed Jewish state as a friendly country with strong ties in several areas.