Israeli-Canadian businessman killed in Alexandria, new group claims incident, accuses him of spying

An Israeli-Canadian businessman was killed in Alexandria on Tuesday in what a previously unknown group claimed as an assassination done in response to the Israeli aggression on Gaza and to the deceased’s alleged espionage.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry, however, described the case as a criminal matter.

The group, which announced itself for the first time on Tuesday night through a newly created Telegram channel and now-suspended X account, published a statement saying it had conducted the assassination. Calling itself the “Vanguards of Liberation - Martyr Mohamed Salah Group,” it announced that it had killed Ziv Kipper, an Israeli-Canadian businessman.

Kipper was the CEO of O.K. Group, a company he established in Alexandria in November 2012 that works in exporting frozen fruits, vegetables and coal, with offices in Israel and Ukraine.

The group accused Kipper of having used his business as a cover for “collecting information and recruiting the weak-spirited for the Mossad,” based on information about “the target’s activities” that the group will reveal gradually “as the security situation allows.”

Vanguards of Liberation said they were acting in response to 200 days of the Occupation military’s massacres in the Gaza Strip, as well as its recent invasion of the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt. They described the  “operation” as a resumption of “the struggle of the Egyptian people against the Zionist enemy since the 1948 war and through the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973,” and a return to a legacy of similar incidents of targeting Israelis in Egypt in the years since. 

The group’s name, and an image in the background of its statement, refer to Egyptian soldier Mohamed Salah, who crossed the border with Israel in 2023, killing three Occupation soldiers before being killed.

Significant popular support for Salah, who was seen as an icon of resistance against Israeli Occupation, emerged online at the time. The incident was ultimately described by authorities as part of the response to drug smugglers operating over Egypt’s border with the Israeli-held Negev Desert.

The statement was followed on Wednesday night with a video shot from the viewpoint of a person holding a gun. The person approaches a man sitting in the driver seat of a white car, shooting him multiple times while saying, “Shalom, from the sons of Gaza.” A screenshot was captured from the video and circulated online with the same line written on it.

Fact-checking platform Saheeh Masr said it was able to confirm through visual analysis of the video screenshot that the footage released by the group was taken near a highway in Alexandria, close to the headquarters of  Kipper’s company.

In the first hours of Wednesday, the Interior Ministry released a brief statement saying a “Canadian businessman” who has been a permanent resident in Egypt was shot in a “criminal” incident, without reference to his Israeli citizenship or the statement that ensued following his assassination. Sources quoted by Al-Masry Al-Youm minutes after the statement said “the perpetrator” had already been identified by the investigative team and was being questioned about his motivations, without details about his identity.

Egyptian security sources quoted by Reuters said the incident is being investigated as a robbery, adding that they had no information on the existence of the group or whether it had been involved in the incident.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry statement confirmed that Kipper was an Israeli-Canadian dual citizen who operated a business in Egypt.