He sits flanked by armed extremists, a baby-faced Islamic State suspect who has been dubbed the ‘white jihadi’.

The meek-looking young man in a T-shirt appeared in a photo on Twitter yesterday holding an assault rifle in front of the Black Standard flag of IS.

Last night counter-terrorism experts were trying to identify the fighter, amid speculation that the photo could be a sophisticated fake.

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A picture has emerged on Twitter of a young white male posing with guns in front of the Black Standard flag of ISIS

Some Twitter users claimed he was British or Australian, while there were unconfirmed comments that the youthful jihadi’s name is Jonathan Edwards.

In a further twist, the image also seems to have first appeared online around the start of December.

The picture was tweeted by ResistanceER on December 2 with the message: 'Creepy Isis soldier in their rank of "Brave and well Trained" soldiers.

But if genuine, the recruitment of a young, white man could be viewed as a major coup for the terrorist group.

Haras Rafiq, of counter-extremism think-tank Quilliam, said the group was examining the image’s authenticity.

‘I have not come across this picture before,’ he said. ‘It is also strange that one post has called him “Jonathan Edwards” rather than him taking on an Islamic name. But having said that, I am not going to discount it.’

Abu Abdel Malik Al-Britani's death was announced on social media

He added that IS had access to ‘very sophisticated’ editing software used by Hollywood special effects experts. Comments left by Twitter users suggest it has been doctored.

Another source said there were no known white converts in Syria and the photo had not been shared and ‘celebrated’ by IS. ‘If he’s happy to sit there with his face uncovered, we’d have seen it in a bigger propaganda hit,’ said the source.

Most fighters who have travelled to join extremists in Syria and Iraq are of Asian or African heritage, with around 60 Australians and about 500 Britons. But Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, has suggested the figure for Britons was a fourfold underestimate.

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Scotland Yard said nobody with the name Jonathan Edwards had been reported missing. The Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases.

It said: 'The UK advises against all travel to Syria and parts of Iraq. Anyone who does travel to these areas, even for humanitarian reasons, is putting themselves in considerable danger of harm.'

It follows news that a jihadist calling himself Abu Abdel Malik al-Britani became the 35th Briton to have been killed while fighting for ISIS in Syria this week.

He was pictured smiling as he posed with an M16 assault rifle outside a sports shop.

In the image the militant is seen wearing camouflage gear as he proudly brandishes the weapon on a shopping street.

He is understood to have been killed alongside two Canadian jihadis during fierce clashes in the Syrian desert town of Dabiq.

Jihadi: Rashid Amani, 19, had been fighting for Islamic State in the besieged Syrian town of Kobane when he suffered serious wounds from a US air strike

He is just the latest in a steady flow of British militants to be killed fighting for ISIS in the Middle East - a figure that has grown dramatically towards the end of the year as American-led airstrikes target the group's strongholds and Kurdish YPG and Peshmerga forces retake land from the terrorists.

Today it was revealed that US-led air strikes in Syria and Iraq have killed more than 1,000 jihadis in the past three months, nearly all of them from the Islamic State.

'At least 1,171 have been killed in the Arab and international air strikes [since September 23], including 1,119 jihadists of the Islamic State group and Al-Nusra Front,' said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and medics across the war-ravaged country for its information.

Among the dead were 1,046 members of IS, which has seized large chunks of Iraq and Syria and is the main target of the air campaign.

Seventy-two of those killed were members of Al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front, while another was a jihadist prisoner whose affiliation was unknown, an Observatory statement said. The remaining 52 were civilians.

Abu Abdel Malik's death was announced on social media by a fighter of Algerian origin who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Musab and who claims to have trained alongside the militant in Syria.

He said the Briton was killed in Dabiq alongside two militants of Canadian origin named Abu Ibrahim Al-Canadi & Abu Abdullah Al-Canadi.

ISIS supporters on social media raised the possibility that the pair could be Calgary-raised brothers Collin and Greg Gordon, who joined ISIS in August having only recently converted to Islam.

Details of Abu Abdel Malik's true identity are not known and reports of his death could not be independently verified. The Foreign Office said it was aware of reports of the death of a British national, but could not confirm their legitimacy due to the lack of consular presence in Syria.

He is just the latest in a long line of British killed fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq in recent months - many of them having travelled to join the group after its declaration of a so-called caliphate in the vast swaths of territory it controls, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's self-appointment as a caliph.

The number of British deaths has risen dramatically towards the end of the year, as the fighter's naive expectations of Call of Duty-style warfare are replaced by the brutal reality of fierce battles with the group's enemies: Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, the Free Syrian Army, Syrian and Iraqi regime armies, Sunni tribes, Shia militias, and a number of other rebel groups in the area.

Sick: Former supervisor at Primark, 25-year-old Muhammad Hamidur Rahman (left), was one of four Portsmouth jihadis killed fighting in Syria. In November Kabir Ahmed (right), a 30-year-old father of three from Derby, blew himself up in Iraq killing eight people and injuring 15 others

Their fight is made even harder by near constant airstrikes from warplanes sent by the U.S. and its Arab allies in Syria; and from America, Belgium, Canada, France, Netherlands, Australia and of course Britain itself in neighbouring Iraq.

The greatest number of Britons killed fighting for ISIS, however, have been killed in street battles with Kurdish YPG and Peshmerga troops, who have been making huge gains in northern Syria and western Iraq since September, having lost vast swaths of territory to ISIS earlier in the year.

In recent weeks there have been a number of reports of British militants expressing their desire to return to Britain having grown disillusioned with the reality of fighting for ISIS.

Professor Peter Neumann from King's College London's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation says he was contacted by a man representing a group of up to 30 British militants, all of whom wanted to return to the UK but were worried about being arrested on their return.