Melbourne schoolboy reportedly fighting for IS

A teenager from Melbourne's northern suburbs is reportedly fighting for Islamic State.

(Twitter)

A schoolboy branded 'Britain's white jihadi' by the UK press, is reportedly a teenager from Melbourne's northern suburbs.

Fairfax Media has identified the 18-year-old only by his first name Jake, at his family's request. The report says he was a maths whiz who attended an accelerated learning program at Craigieburn Second College.

However, the report says, he dropped out of high school last year after converting to Islam and bought a one way ticket to Istanbul, before travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight for the so-called caliphate.

Last December a picture emerged on Twitter showing the teen sitting between two bearded men and holding an assault rifle.

He was wrongly identified as British after his photograph hit Twitter, and a user identified the young man "Jonathan Edwards". The tweet said he had "applied for Ucas (Britain's Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) to [sic] late and wasn't accepted in any university, so he joined the Islamic state".

After Britain's Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph newspapers ran the story, Abu Dawud laughed that the had "trolled" and "humiliated" the British media, by making up the story.