KUALA LUMPUR, June 27 — Filipinos and Indonesians engaging in militant activities in Syria have claimed to be from Malaysia, making it harder to verify the actual number of Malaysian casualties in the conflict raging there, Bukit Aman said.

Senior Assistant Commissioner Datuk Ayob Khan, an official in the police intelligence division’s anti-terrorism unit, also said establishing the identities of the Malaysians was complicated further because those who joined militant activities often left behind their identification documents.

“Similar to the conflict in Afghanistan, we discovered militants from the Philippines and Indonesia posing as Malaysians... making it hard for us to confirm if there were indeed 15 Malaysians killed in Syria,” he was quoted as saying by The Star daily.

Although militants entering Syria do carry their identification papers, they often leave their documents behind in safe houses before engaging in armed combat, Ayob said.

“This is to make it harder for the authorities to identify them if they are killed in action,” he added.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that 15 Malaysians were allegedly killed in Syria after joining terrorist and jihadist activities with Islamist militant group Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), according to the Permanent Representative of Syria to the United Nations in New York.

It said that the news was conveyed by the Permanent Representative of Syria to the United Nations in New York in a press conference on June 18, 2014.

ISIS, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), is a splinter group of al-Qaeda that wants to set up an Islamic caliphate encompassing both Iraq and Syria.

ISIS is viewed as a terror organisation by authorities both here and abroad.

A Malaysian suspected of being a member of ISIS was believed to have been the suicide bomber who killed 25 members of an Iraqi police team last month.

Earlier this month, three local men were arrested by police for suspected links to ISIS.

Today, Ayob was reported as saying that the police are aware of the militants’ online activities in recruiting members to jihadist movements and had even established their identities since last year.

Zulkarnain Mohd Yasin, the head of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) Monitoring and Enforcement Division, said that Section 130 of the Penal Code could be used to probe terrorists or jihadists that spread terrorism including through online activities.

The probe would fall under the police’s Counter Terrorism Division’s jurisdiction, The Star reported him as saying.