Led coalition target IS oil facilities in eastern Syria

Britain’s defense secretary says British Tornados struck at oil fields that help finance the activities of the Islamic State group – the first strikes to follow after a vote in Parliament authorizing military action in Syria.

The BBC reported that eight additional jets – “two Tornados and six Typhoons” – would join the RAF aircraft already at the base.

The MoD also said that RAF pilots used “the aircraft’s advanced sensors to confirm that no civilians were in the proximity of the targets” and said the initial analysis was that the strikes had been successful in their objectives.

According to the latest YouGov poll commissioned by The Times, it found that less than half of Britons support air strikes against Isis in Syria.

After Britain joined France’s military intervention in 2011, with NATO support, to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, resulting in considerable chaos in North Africa, Cameron appeared to pull back from military action.

“The threat is very real”, Mr. Cameron said of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, on Wednesday, as he opened the debate in the House of Commons.

But Al-Watan took another line, highlighting Mr Cameron’s remark on the “narrowing gap” between the West and Syria’s Russian allies over the future of President Bashar al-Assad.

Although the British vote adds negligible new military capability to the coalition, it took on outsized political and diplomatic significance since gunmen and bombers killed 130 people last month in Paris.

Speaking on the programme, Mr Hammond said: “I can not believe us stopping air strikes against Daesh (ISIS) in Raqqa for so long as they represent a threat to us, a threat to British citizens and a threat to the British homeland”.

There has been as yet no reaction by Islamic State to the British parliament’s vote, and little comment by IS’s online supporters to give a good steer on how the group might respond. “They attack us because of who we are, not because of what we do”.

“I am always anxious that the greatest oratory can lead us into the greatest mistakes”, he said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were also attending the meeting.

Some question what impact four fighters could make in the war against the Islamic State.

French fighter jets joined the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State extremists in Iraq in 2014 and expanded their mission to IS targets in Syria in September.

The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was openly opposed to taking action in Syria and tweeted his regret at the decision reached. Putin again accused Turkey profiting from oil trade with IS – allegations Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strongly denied. However, overall, 29% of Labour MPs defied their leader.

Labour’s Shabana Mahmood – one of the few Muslim lawmakers in Parliament – described the Islamic State group as “Nazi-esque totalitarians who are outlaws from Islam”, but said she opposed the strikes because “we can not simply bomb the ground, we have to have a strategy to hold it as well”. 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.