UPDATE — April 20, 2015, 08:47 a.m. ET
The Ethiopian government confirmed Monday that the 30 Christians apparently shot and beheaded in a video filmed by ISIS in Libya were its citizens, Reuters reported.
The country's Office of Government Communications Affairs said in a statement: "The Ethiopian government is deeply saddened by the barbarous act committed against our innocent nationals."
The statement added that Ethiopian authorities were working to identify the victims.
BuzzFeed News' report on the video from Sunday follows below.
A video released online on Sunday purports to show ISIS supporters killing dozens of Ethiopian Christians in Libya either by beheading or shooting.
The half-hour video, which cannot be independently verified by BuzzFeed News, features extensive speeches against Christianity and the West.
Its final moments show a group of men dressed in black who are said to be held in southern Libya by a group of masked fighters clutching machine guns. The prisoners are then shot in the back of the head.
The video also shows masked militants walking a group of men in orange jumpsuits along a beach, said to be in eastern Libya. The men's severed heads are then shown lying in the sands.
“You will not have safety even in your dreams, until you accept Islam,” says a masked man, speaking English with an American accent. “Our battle is a battle between faith and blasphemy, between truth and falsehood.”
The video is reminiscent of an earlier ISIS video uploaded in February that showed more than 20 Egyptian Christians being beheaded on a beach said to be in Libya.
That footage was internationally condemned and prompted Egypt to launch airstrikes against a series of ISIS targets.
While having seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria last year, the purported presence of ISIS in Libya is a relatively new phenomenon.
According to the New York Times, most analysts believe the men are "independent" locals claiming affinity with ISIS and "trying to capitalize on the group’s fearsome reputation."
Libya has been a hotbed of militant activity since the overthrow of leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011.
Many sub-Saharan migrants pass through the country in a bid to board vessels in the Mediterranean bound for European shores.
While the journey at sea is notoriously dangerous, with hundreds feared drowned during an incident on Sunday, activists say many migrants are exploited in North Africa by people smugglers who may sell them to militant groups.