Melbourne teen Jake Bilardi has died in an Iraq suicide bombing: reports.

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

UPDATE:

Australian teenager Jake Bilardi, who has been linked to a suicide bombing attack in Iraq, left a series of improvised explosive devices at his family home before going to Syria, the ABC has confirmed.

It is understood Bilardi’s family in Melbourne located the devices and alerted authorities.

Following the discovery, Australian authorities began attempting to track Bilardi’s movements in the Middle East.

Although it has been reported Bilardi planned to conduct terrorist attacks in Australia, news of the discovery of the bombs is the first evidence this went beyond mere intent.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she did not want to comment on whether Bilardi was involved in planning an attack in Australia.

“These are matters we are currently seeking to confirm, and once I’ve had a briefing from our agencies on these issues, I will make a comment on it,” she said.

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).

The format also 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.

Related: Who is the Australian school boy who fled to Syria to fight with ISIS?

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 join the conflict put their lives in mortal danger, and should leave the fighting and the conflict zone immediately.

‘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 nor deny who they were investigating.

This article originally appeared on ABC News, and has been republished here with full permission.