Britain launches airstrikes on IS in Syria

A Ministry of Defence spokesman told the AP the planes had constructed strikes in Syria, and details about their targets would be provided later Thursday.

US President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande said they welcomed Britain’s move.

The vote comes as the USA and its allies announced that they staged 17 airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria on Tuesday.

Britain’s parliament is set to vote on Wednesday to approve air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria after months of wrangling over whether enough opposition Labour lawmakers would back military action. A military source said: “We are going after the head of the snake but it’s also about going after its wallet”.

The Omar oilfield is one of the biggest in the country and the MoD said it represented more than 10 per cent of IS’s potential oil revenue.

Even though Corbyn was obviously against the strikes, 66 of his Labour MPs made a decision to vote for the Syrian air strike.

German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier called for unity, saying, “the situation is too unsafe, and freedom and stability too fragile, for us to counter each other”.

The mood has changed following the November 13 Paris attacks, claimed by ISIL, that killed 130 people.

The PM’s comments come after the RAF began bombing IS in Syria, following MPs voting to allow air strikes to be extended from Iraq into Syria.

Six Eurofighter Typhoon jets and an additional two Panavia Tornado GR4s were dispatched to join a strike force of eight Tornados operating out of the Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri, Cyprus.

Despite reservations about her party’s leadership, The Rt Hon Fiona Mactaggart joined Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s stance in opposing bombs being dropped.

In astonishing scenes, the shadow foreign secretary gave an impassioned speech directly challenging his party leader, who sat beside him watching while MPs from across the House broke out into cheers of support. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. But what we know about fascists, is that they need to be defeated.

“We now have a vast ungoverned space controlled by a series of competing jihadist forces, some of which are leaking through to Tunisia and we have seen the consequences of that”. But they do amount to a very significant gesture of solidarity with the United States as it ramps up its military operations in Iraq and Syria alongside France, Australia and Denmark. “A new war will not increase the prospects of peace in Syria, nor will the British people be safer from terrorism”.