A former youth leader of a Malaysian Islamist political party died in war-torn Syria while fighting government troops, a news report said today.

Mohamad Lofti Ariffin, former youth information chief of the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) in the northern state of Kedah, succumbed to injuries to his head and left arm when the rebels’ base in Hama was bombed by government forces last week, The Star newspaper said.

“Doctors tried their best to save him. He succumbed to his injuries shortly after Maghrib prayers on Saturday,” The Star quoted a source as saying.

Mohamad Lofti from the opposition-allied PAS was the third Malaysian jihadist to die in Syria, the newspaper added.

A police source said nearly 100 Malaysian jihadists are fighting with different rebel groups in Syria, including the Islamic State (IS) group.

“It’s difficult to put an exact number on it because these jihadists usually go to a third country before heading to Syria,” he told dpa .

Police are investigating reports that at least three Malaysian women have joined IS militants to provide sexual services to male fighters, the source said.

Meanwhile, it was reported today that two of four Indonesians who died fighting alongside the Islamic State militant group in Syria had carried out suicide bombings.

“Two committed suicide bombings while the causes of deaths for the two others are being investigated,” national police chief General Sutarman was quoted as saying in Detik.com news portal.

It was not clear when the Indonesians died.

Police said there were at least 66 Indonesians who traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State, 10 of whom had since returned.

There has been growing concern about the militant group’s recruitment efforts in the country, after a recent Internet video showing an Indonesian fighter making an impassioned appeal for compatriots to join the jihadist cause abroad.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, government ministers and religious leaders have spoken out against the Islamic State and warned that it is a threat to the country.

The organisation has taken control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, and has been accused of atrocities against Shiite Muslims and the Yazidi, a Kurdish religious community in Iraq.

- dpa