A 58-year-old American oil worker was reportedly murdered by an Egyptian militant organization with ties to the terrorist organization Islamic State, which controls vast swaths of Syria and Iraq, the Associated Press reported. The terror group claimed responsibility, but did not reveal details about when or how they killed the victim.
Pictures of William Henderson's passport and two identification cards were published by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which now refers to itself as the Sinai Province, along with the announcement of the murder on its official Twitter account on Sunday night.
Henderson worked for Texas-based energy company Apache Corp. and Qarun Petroleum Co., a joint venture with Egypt, according to the passport. In August, the company had stated that a supervisor, who was not identified, had been involved in an apparent hijacking and was later allegedly found slain in Egypt's Western Desert.
But according to an obituary published by the Enid News & Eagle in northwestern Oklahoma in August, the 58-year-old, who had allegedly worked for Apache for 28 years, had "passed suddenly" on Aug. 6 while working in Karama, Egypt.
Since the July 2013 overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, the Sinai-based jihadi group has mainly targeted Egyptian security forces in a score of attacks, according to New York Daily News.
Last month, the Egyptian militant organization pledged allegiance to ISIS and carried out more than 10 attacks, with the most recent one being at an army checkpoint in the Sinai Peninsula where it claimed to have blown up six army and police armored vehicles, killed seven police officers and conscripts, and demolished the house of a man accused of being a spy for the army, according to a separate statement on late Sunday.
In October, the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula was placed under a state of emergency after the group attacked an army checkpoint, killing 31 soldiers.
Henderson, who is survived by his wife of 34 years and two daughters, was a resident of Fayetteville, Ark., at the time of his death. Originally from Texas, he had lived in Oklahoma for many years.
"Bill had a love for fishing, Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, show pigs, and most of all his family and beloved grandchildren," according to his obituary.
In another instance, the President of the Counter Extremism Project, Fran Townsend, recently received threats on Twitter that she will be beheaded by a self-described Islamic State sympathizer and extremist, Breitbart reported via a press release from CEP.
Townsend, a former U.S. Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to President George W. Bush, was intimidated on social media through a Twitter account belonging to Mujahid Miski, an identity that is believed to be the alias of a suspected American jihadist whose given name is Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan.
Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy declined to comment on the militant group's claim, and Apache could not immediately be reached for comment.
