Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic has said that he cannot confirm "with 100 percent certainty" the death of a Croatian hostage that the Islamic State (IS) militant group claims to have beheaded.
He said on August 12 that a confirmation may not come for several days.
In a televised address to the nation, Milanovic urged people not to share the gruesome image of the headless body online and not to expose their children to it.
IS militants claimed on August 12 that they had beheaded Tomislav Salopek by posting a purported photograph of his body on IS-affiliated Twitter accounts.
Salopek had been working with the French geoscience firm CGG when he was abducted from a car in July to the west of Cairo.
His kidnappers last week issued a 48-hour deadline that ended on August 7, threatening to kill him unless Egyptian officials released all Muslim women prisoners from jail.