KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad invited the Philippines on Friday to send officials to investigate the alleged deaths of infants during a crackdown on illegal Filipino workers.

His response to an outpouring of popular anger in neighboring Indonesia and the Philippines at a crackdown on illegal foreign workers was his second in a week, Reuters reported.

"I'm trying to resolve this thing in a rational way so if they say we are ill-treating the Filipinos, let them come and see," Mahathir told a news conference.

About 1,500 Filipinos sailed home from Malaysia on Thursday as protests erupted in Manila, where activists torched pictures of Mahathir and burned the Malaysian flag after a local newspaper said 13 infants had died in the exodus.

"It's not a government action," he said of Thursday's action in Manila.

Earlier this week in Jakarta, protesters showed their anger at Malaysia in similar fashion by burning its flag.

Mahathir on Tuesday dismissed the protest, blaming it on an extremist group he said was in no way linked to the Indonesian government.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said on Thursday that she planned to send Ex-premier Fidel Ramos to Malaysia to discuss the migrants issue with Mahathir "so that the remaining deportations will be smoother".

But Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar questioned the need for ramose to come to Kuala Lumpur.

"We don't know what his objective is. We won't say that we don't want him. If that's what they want it's up to our leader to receive him," he told a news conference on Friday.

*******Conflicting Reports over Deaths******* A Malaysian official had earlier denied that infants died in detention centers housing illegal Filipino workers being deported from eastern Sabah State.

"The infants may have died while receiving treatment at the hospitals as those who complained about illness were immediately referred to the nearest hospitals," Director of the Federal Special Task Force, Mohd Ghazali Ahmad, told Friday's edition of ***** The New Straits Times***** In addition, officials from the UNHCR and the Philippines had expressed satisfaction about conditions at the Sabah detention camps when they had visited them, he said.

His comments referred to a Manila newspaper report on Thursday, which said, 13 Filipino infants had died in detention camps in Sabah and on ships taking immigrants home following a Malaysian crackdown on illegal workers.

Philippines Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said later only three of the children had died during the crackdown, the others having died before it began.

Lowell Martin, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees in Kuala Lumpur, denied any of his staff had visited the Sabah camps.

The deportees were the latest in a wave of illegals expelled by Malaysian authorities after Kuala Lumpur cracked down on an estimated 600,000 undocumented workers in the country.

Malaysia's government gave illegal immigrants, the majority of them Indonesians, until August 1 to leave or face penalties of six months' jail and up to six strokes of the cane.