Islamic State: Australian teenager Jake Bilardi believed to be involved in suicide bombing in Iraq

Updated

Islamic State (IS) propaganda claims Australian teenager Jake Bilardi was among the latest group of suicide bombers that struck in Iraq's Anbar province.

Bilardi was this week identified as the young man shown in an image published in December, holding an assault rifle in front of an IS flag.

A new propaganda image is now circulating on the Internet, claiming to show a suicide bomber dubbed Abu Abdullah al-Australi — Bilardi's pseudonym — before he attacks an Iraqi army unit in Anbar province west of Baghdad.

It features a four-wheel drive with a smashed, taped-up rear window moving down a dusty backstreet.

An inset image shows a pale-skinned, long-haired young man who resembles Bilardi, sitting behind the wheel.

There is no way to confirm the authenticity of the images, but there was a wave of car bomb attacks in Anbar province on Wednesday (local time).

Twelve car bombs exploded almost simultaneously around the city of Ramadi, capital of Anbar, after dawn with at least seven suicide bombers targeting government security installations, police said.

BBC journalist recounts exchange with Bilardi External Link: Secunder Kermani BBC teaser

Journalist Secunder Kermani told ABC News 24 he made contact with an IS follower he believed to be Jake Bilardi.



I managed to get in touch with the person who I suspected was in that photo and I managed to make contact with him over the internet and we ended up having a conversation over - I think it was either one or two evenings about what he was doing in ISIS, why he had decided to join them.



I kind of challenged him on a lot of points about obviously the kind of well-known examples of brutality that ISIS are conducting in Syria and in Iraq.



And he appeared as someone who wholeheartedly ideologically committed to the group.



He had no problem, it seemed, with justifying attacks against ... people like James Foley, Steven Sotloff, the people killed by ISIS.



We talked about what his views are towards Australia because some of the tweets he had sent out had suggested that he was in favour of attacking Australia and he said that he thought that Australia knew what it was getting into when it entered the coalition against ISIS, so it deserves what happened to it next.



He also told me back then that he was on the waiting lists to be a suicide bomber, and he told me that he was ... planning to do a suicide bomb attack in a car, which if today's news is confirmed, would appear to be what's happened. I managed to get in touch with the person who I suspected was in that photo and I managed to make contact with him over the internet and we ended up having a conversation over - I think it was either one or two evenings about what he was doing in ISIS, why he had decided to join them.I kind of challenged him on a lot of points about obviously the kind of well-known examples of brutality that ISIS are conducting in Syria and in Iraq.And he appeared as someone who wholeheartedly ideologically committed to the group.He had no problem, it seemed, with justifying attacks against ... people like James Foley, Steven Sotloff, the people killed by ISIS.We talked about what his views are towards Australia because some of the tweets he had sent out had suggested that he was in favour of attacking Australia and he said that he thought that Australia knew what it was getting into when it entered the coalition against ISIS, so it deserves what happened to it next.He also told me back then that he was on the waiting lists to be a suicide bomber, and he told me that he was ... planning to do a suicide bomb attack in a car, which if today's news is confirmed, would appear to be what's happened.

At least 17 people were killed and 38 wounded, according to a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor at Ramadi hospital.

The format of the image matches previous images and videos in which suicide bombers explained what they were about to do.

The image was first shared on Twitter by an account that regularly shares IS propaganda, and distributed on a website popular among Islamic State-linked media.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was very difficult to confirm reports of deaths in Syria and Iraq due to the conflict in those countries.

It said Australians who joined the conflict put their lives in mortal danger, and should leave the fighting and the conflict zone immediately.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the reports were another shocking example of the brutality of IS.

"There are unconfirmed reports to this effect. This is a horrific situation, an absolutely horrific situation," he said.

"It shows the lure of this death cult to impressionable youngsters.

"It's very, very important that we do everything we can to try to safeguard our young people against the lure of this shocking alien and extreme ideology."

Australian National University propaganda expert Professor Michael Wesley told ABC NewsRadio it was hard to confirm whether the IS tweets could be taken at face value.

"I wouldn't put it past them to be making things up at this stage," he said.

Professor Wesley said he was not surprised by Bilardi's young age as IS propaganda was targeted squarely at youths.

"We're seeing a range of ages being recruited by IS but young people are very prominent among them," he said.

'White jihadi' identified as Bilardi

Bilardi was recently identified by Fairfax Media as the IS recruit declared the "white jihadi" and wrongly identified as British by the British media last year.

Earlier this week, the ABC spoke to two people who knew Bilardi and confirmed he was the young man captured in the IS picture.

Angela Scaffidi met Bilardi in 2012 when he did work experience at corporate communications firm Senate SHJ.

"Oh God. Yes, that's Jake. That's horrendous," she said.

"He did some work experience with us, he's a special young man. He was quite a talented writer and a nice young man."

Ms Scaffidi said Bilardi also had a blog and wrote about Australian and international news.

"It was quite factual, it didn't have an ideological slant," she said.

"His idea was to blog away to get into journalism."

Another person who met Bilardi in 2012 described him as an "awkward" teenager.

A spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police said they were aware of the matter but would not confirm or deny who they were investigating.

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, islam, federal-government, world-politics, iraq, melbourne-3000, australia

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